We don’t want your money – We demand humanism and solidarity to be shown

Statement by AKEL MEP G. Georgiou in the European Parliament plenary discussion on the situation of migrants on the Greek-Turkish border and the EU’s common response

10 March 2020, plenary European Parliament

The Greek Nobel Prize poet Seferis in “Eleni” writes about “the sundered bodies, on the souls of those who know they will not return”…. This is how the refugees are also being crushed in the Eastern Mediterranean with vulgarity and provocativeness.

The EU is continuing to watch Erdogan cruelly instrumentalise the drama of the refugees and mock us, seeking to benefit from the role he is portraying himself as the “the protector of refugees” that the EU itself has assigned to him, and by doing so relieving him of any responsibility.

Instead of the EU looking at its own responsibilities for the military interventions and ongoing wars that have created the waves of refugees, instead of taking measures to combat the rise of nationalism and racist rhetoric being promoted by Right-wing governments, instead of abolishing the Dublin Regulation and pursuing a comprehensive overall policy based on humanism and solidarity, both towards the refugees and between member states themselves, it continues Erdogan’s games, condemning refugees to be used as pawns and a bargaining chip for alterior geopolitical objectives.

Instead of the elaboration of a common asylum system based on the sharing of equal burdens being discussed, the key pressing issue on the table is the enlargement of the shameful EU-Turkey Declaration of 2016, with promises of new gifts to be given to Turkey worth billions of Euros. This is shameful…

The refugees are not our enemies. Our enemy is the barbaric policies that have created the refugee flows. That’s what is being judged right now at Evros. The prestige of humanity is being judged on the Greek-Turkish border – together with Democracy in Europe.