German chancellor Angela Merkel yesterday urged EU member states to share responsibility for the refugee crisis across the bloc, as Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban warned of an "unlimited" flow of people entering the EU in the coming years.
Speaking on the second day of the European People's Party (EPP) congress, in Madrid, Dr Merkel said the current crisis was the greatest migratory challenge facing Europe in decades, and defended the decision to engage with Turkey as "the right thing to do".
“We cannot simply push away boats where people sink before our own eyes. It is right that the [European] Commission has started talking to Turkey . . . We cannot simply leave these people to our neighbour, whether it is Lebanon, Jordan or Turkey.”
Migration dominated the final day of the EPP congress amid divisions among members on how to handle the crisis.
Response
Senior members of Dr Merkel’s CDU party, the largest delegation of MEPs in the
European Parliament
, are among those who criticised the chancellor’s response, opening the country’s borders to Syrian refugees when the crisis escalated in September.
Leaders of Balkan states and a number of EU countries, including Austria, Germany, Greece and Hungary, gather on Sunday, in Brussels, for an emergency meeting on the migration crisis as thousands of refugees continue to cross between Croatia and Slovenia.
The mini-summit, which unusually was called by European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker rather than EU Council president Donald Tusk, is widely believed to have been scheduled at the behest of the chancellor.
Yesterday, Mr Tusk, who has steered the EU towards a more hardline approach to the refugee crisis in recent weeks, reiterated the need for Europe to reinforce its external borders. “Today, no task is more important for the moderate centre right than the re-establishment of Europe’s external borders, “ he said.
Helplessness
“We can no longer allow solidarity to be equivalent to naivety, openness to be equivalent to helplessness, freedom to be equivalent to chaos.”
Mr Tusk has not yet confirmed his attendance at Sunday’s meeting.
Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, whose response to the migration crisis has been criticised by human-rights groups, rejected its characterisation as a refugee issue, accusing some of those reaching the EU of being “foreign fighters”. “This is a migratory movement composed of economic migrants, refugees and also foreign fighters. This is an uncontrolled and unregulated process.”
He told delegates there was "an unlimited source of supply" of people on the move from Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Africa, as well as Syria, and criticised the European left of a "clear agenda" that is supportive of migrants.
“We are EPP. Our behaviour should not be determined by the opinion of our rivals . . . Do not let liberals and socialists take away Europe from the people,” he said.
Russia's incursion into Ukraine was also raised by a number of EPP figures, with Estonia's minister of social protection calling for a robust response to its former ruler.
"Russia's entry into the Syrian war show us that Russia wants to make the refugee crisis even worse, to provoke more civilian casualties," Margus Tsahkna said, urging the EU to maintain its sanction regime against Moscow.
Dr Merkel said Russia’s incursion into Ukraine and annexation of Crimea was unacceptable. “[Ukraine] is Poland’s neighbour: that means it is our neighbour. We thought that the principle of territorial integrity couldn’t be violated. Then we saw the annexation of Crimea.”
