Luxembourg's foreign minister wants to cut EU money for refusers of refugee admission
In the discussion on the admission of under-age migrants from Greek camps, Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn warns that only individual states like Germany will accept people. The Federal Government had previously rejected the idea of taking in refugees on its own, but many politicians promoted it at Christmas.
"A solo effort by a few states is not enough", Asselborn told "Der Spiegel". "Otherwise we will never make fundamental progress in this matter." The unaccompanied minors in the Greek camps were at most 4000 people, Asselborn said. For every million inhabitants of the EU, that was exactly nine people. Their admission would not be a feat of strength for anyone if all states were to follow suit. At least three-quarters of those affected on the Greek islands were entitled to asylum.
"These people did not come to Greece, but to the EU. And the EU must solve this problem as well."
In doing so, Asselborn indirectly threatened to have consequences for states that obstruct a more even distribution of migrants. "If individual member states opt out on issues of elementary humanity, this will have a strong negative impact on the next EU budget," he said.
The EU, he said, was a community with common interests, which is why solidarity on issues such as asylum policy had to be included in the negotiations on the next budget, in addition to the rule of law.
Ursula von der Leyen's EU Commission recently called on Germany and other EU states to accept unaccompanied minors from overcrowded Greek reception camps. According to the latest information from the EU Commission, only 1922 unaccompanied minors were registered on the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Samos, Leros and Kos as of 20 December. At the end of November, there were 5276 in the whole of Greece - of which only nine percent are younger than 14 years and thus children within the meaning of the law for the protection of minors. 92 percent of the total number of these minors are male.
Record Greece: "PR action just before Christmas" or "commandment of humanity"?
Advance by Green leader Habeck
At the end of last week, Green Party leader Robert Habeck had sparked a debate by calling on Germany to accept up to 4000 children from the Greek islands. Stephan Mayer (CSU), Parliamentary State Secretary in the Federal Ministry of the Interior, rejected the initiative on behalf of the federal government. "If Germany were to go it alone at this point in time, the other EU countries would shirk their responsibilities," he told the Editorial Network Germany.
Lower Saxony's Minister of the Interior Boris Pistorius, however, signalled to Federal Minister of the Interior Horst Seehofer that he would accept the minors. "We must get these young people out of there as quickly as possible", Pistorius told the newspaper "Tagesspiegel". At Christmas, several other politicians spoke out in favour of accepting the children and young people, including the CDU politician Ruprecht Polenz and Thuringia's Prime Minister Bodo Ramelow
https://de.sputniknews.com/politik/20191226326283296-fluechtlingsaufnahme-eu-geld/
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[–] BT1100 ago
They prefer persons like Nancy ... You won't find many refugees there.