The Rocky Road to Globalization
Throughout the world, desirable advanced economies who provide services to their citizens are being hammered by waves of immigrants from less developed and supporting economies. Germany’s Chancellor Merkel says that we must welcome these people who are endangered in their home countries. In the US whether or not to welcome immigrants and embrace people who have come to this country without going through the required legal channels is one of the prime these of the 2016 Presidential debate.
Ian Traynor writes: Thousands of refugees were heading towards Hungary and the EU border as the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said the union’s member states must fairly share the burden of dealing with Europe’s biggest migration crisis since the second world war.
Merkel said Europe needed to act together to deal with the chaotic scenes in Greece and the western Balkans as desperate migrants tried to reach the EU. “The current situation troubles us greatly,” she said.
Germany and France are to draft common proposals on immigration and security to deal with the worsening emergency. On Monday, Merkel said they could include building new registration centres in Greece and Italy to be run and staffed by the EU as a whole by the end of the year.
She said: “Time is running out. EU member states must share costs relating to this action.”
The two leaders also said that the EU must draw up a unified list of safe countries of origin. Asylum seekers arriving from these countries should be swiftly returned.
Berlin is increasingly determined to push a new system of mandatory quotas for refugees across the EU despite the issue being rejected by EU leaders. Many immigrants spend three days on Greece’s northern border after Macedonia refused to allow them to enter.
At the Serbian border crossing of Miratovac, refugees walked three miles to a reception centre in the southern town of Preševo. Most carried their belongings in rucksacks and men carried small children on their shoulders. In Preševo, they received medical aid, food and papers legalising their transit through the country.
Germany is warning of reintroducing national border controls unless other countries step up to the plate and share the refugee burden more equitably. Proposals from Brussels in May to introduce mandatory refugee quotas across the EU on a small initial scale were rejected by Spain and most of eastern Europe. At their June summit, leaders debated until 3.30am and agreed nothing.
Since then, the number of migrants entering Greece, Italy and the Balkans has soared, with Germany predicting the arrival of 800,000 asylum seekers this year and the figures for the EU projected to triple compared with 2014.
