European leaders are preparing to create a powerful EU-wide border protection force to deal with the refugee crisis engulfing the continent, The Independent understands. Under plans being discussed by officials in Brussels, legal responsibility for deporting people deemed to be economic migrants would pass from the member states to the European Union.The proposal – which would have legal force – will be discussed at the meeting of EU interior and justice ministers later this month.
| You could just borrow the U.S. Border Patrol -- we're not using it... |
The plan would mean that Frontex – the EU agency that currently acts as the liaison point for individual member states’ border controls – would take on new legal responsibilities. It would be able to arrange the deportation of people deemed to be economic migrants from across the EU as well as possibly managing the relocation of refugees across Europe.
On 9 September, Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission President, will present a plan to relocate 120,000 Syrians, Iraqis and Eritreans who have already entered the EU to states across the union. This is in addition to the relocation of 40,000 asylum-seekers previously proposed.
Britain is not expected to take part in the relocation programme as it has an opt-out on EU justice and home affairs issues under the Lisbon Treaty. David Cameron has pledged that the UK would welcome “thousands” of Syrian refugees under a separate scheme.
| Best place in the world for Syrian refugees is Syria. Europe needs to understand that it will pay regardless: either the refugees stay in Syria under Euro protection or they come settle in Europe. Either way you pay... |
Mr Juncker’s address is expected to kick off a move to agree a new plan ahead of an emergency meeting of EU justice and home affairs ministers on 14 September.
Frontex was established in 2004 to reinforce and streamline co-operation between national border authorities. But under the new plan its responsibilities and powers would be hugely extended, which would bring closer the reality of a single European border force.
| Just what Europe needs: more bureaucracy. At least there would be more employment for the sons and daughters of Euro elites, and more white |
The political tensions undermining the EU’s response to the refugee crisis were exposed at the start of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg on 4 September. Countries such as Germany and Italy called for the EU rapidly to put in place a common asylum system or face the collapse of its cherished right to free movement.
“If we have learnt anything from the last three, four weeks it’s that we won’t overcome this crisis if we keep pointing fingers at each other,” said Germany’s Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier. He urged countries to back the joint push by France and Germany for a binding quota system for handling refugees.
| Madrid to Berlin still isn't like Chicago to New York, no matter how much you wish it to be so... |
“Those fleeing wars or bloody dictatorships don’t want to stay in the first country they reach. They want to come to Europe.
“If we go on with this conflict of everyone against the other we risk jeopardising free movement,” he said, adding that “it is not by building walls that countries can stay out of this process”.