The EU is neither a force for peace, nor a family based on solidarity and human rights as it declares
AKEL C.C. Press Office, 15th September 2015, Nicosia
The decisions approved in yesterday’s meeting of EU Μinisters of Interior to handle the flow of refugees are woefully inadequate bearing in mind the enormous needs that have been created.
The EU Ministers failed to agree on the proposal, which provides for binding quotas to relocate 120,000 refugees to the Member States. It decided only the transfer of 40,000 refugees from Italy and Greece, but in this case too only for 34,000 of them has the state where they will be transferred to been identified.
At the same time, several European governments are reintroducing border controls to keep out refugees, implementing brutal repression against refugees and erecting fences and walls. In addition, the EU General Affairs Council yesterday decided to proceed to the second phase of the military naval operation EUNAVFOR Med which aims at preventing the entry of immigrants and refugees in the EU. These are operations that are integrated into the dead-end logic of military solutions to the refugee crisis, which will only result in more tragedy and deaths.
The developments are dramatic and represent an on-going humanitarian crisis. It is again being demonstrated that the EU is neither a force for peace, nor a family based on solidarity and human rights as it declares itself to be. After having participated in imperialist interventions that have uprooted millions of people from their countries, the EU is now shutting its gates so that refugees do not find a shelter as a result of which they end up drowning on its doorstep. Those EU governments refusing to accept a fair distribution of responsibilities and host refugees in their countries bear double responsibilities.
The Cypriot Government correctly expressed Cyprus’ readiness to assume its own share of people. However, more substantive and effective measures are demanded:
- Abolition of the Dublin System and the provision of documents to refugees to go to their country of destination.
- Establishment of a permanent resettlement scheme for refugees in all EU Member States, to which a distribution of refugees according to the population and the economic situation of each state must be made.
- Creation of temporary accommodation sites for asylum seekers in accordance with UN standards, with the financial assistance of the European Union.
AKEL reiterates that the definitive solution to the refugee crisis is the termination of wars and the immediate disengagement of the EU and member states from the Syrian civil war, along with promoting a political solution by diplomatic means.
