TORY PM Cameron yesterday called on European leaders to deport more refugees, describing them as ‘economic migrants’ who, he claimed, don’t have a genuine claim to asylum.
Hundreds of thousands of refugees fleeing bombings and terrorism in the Middle East and Africa have entered Europe in recent weeks. Cameron held a meeting at Chequers with French president Francois Hollande yesterday before joining other European leaders at an emergency EU summit in Brussels.
A deal agreed on Tuesday to relocate 120,000 people across the EU is already creating huge rifts among member states. Slovakia announced it is launching a legal challenge to mandatory quotas that were passed in the majority vote on Tuesday, while Hungary’s PM defended its ‘democratic rights’ to refuse to accept more refugees.
A Downing Street spokesman said Cameron and Hollande spoke for an hour about the migration crisis, the situation in Syria and climate change. Cameron’s spokesman said the two leaders agreed that yesterday’s summit must have a ‘comprehensive approach’. They ‘agreed that EU countries should do more to return migrants who don’t have a genuine claim for asylum to their countries of origin’, Cameron’s spokesman said.
Their meeting came hours after Slovakia, Romania, Hungary and the Czech Republic voted against EU proposals to share out 120,000 refugees from Greece, Italy and Hungary. This did not stop the plan from being approved, however, although Britain – which is not part of the Schengen borderless area – is not required to take part.
Of the 50,400 refugees being allocated from Greece, the largest number (13,009) will go to Germany, a further 9,898 will go to France and 6,127 to Spain, while the others will be divided between other countries. Of the 15,600 refugees being allocated from Italy, Germany again takes the largest number – 4,027 – with France taking 3,064 and Spain 1,896.
The remaining 54,000 were to come from Hungary but this number is now being held ‘in reserve’ until the region’s governments decide where they should go. Czech President Milos Zeman said ‘only the future will show what a mistake this was’. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico said he would rather breach the measure than accept the ‘diktat’ of the majority.
Romania’s President Klaus Iohannis insisted mandatory quotas were not the answer. US President Obama said all European states should accept their ‘fair share’ of asylum seekers, after talks with German Chancellor Merkel. Close to 480,000 refugees have arrived in Europe by sea this year, and are now reaching European shores at a rate of nearly 6,000 a day.
Croatia says that 44,000, including 8,750 on Monday, have arrived since Hungary completed a fence along its border with Serbia last week.
