Jean-Claude Juncker, the European Commission
president, urged Europeans to remember ancestors who sought refuge from
religious persecution, war and famine, and he called for a plan to take
in 160,000 migrants.
Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the
European Commission, said European nations needed to take in 160,000
migrants and announced a package for legal migration, expected in early
2016.
By REUTERS on Publish Date September 9, 2015.
Photo by Frederick Florin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images.
Watch in Times Video »
BRUSSELS — Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Union’s
executive arm, called on the bloc on Wednesday to accept 160,000
migrants, imploring leaders not to remain indifferent in the face of one
of Europe’s toughest humanitarian challenges in decades.
“Turning
a blind eye to poor and helpless people, that is not Europe,” said Mr.
Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg. Coming against the
backdrop of anti-immigrant sentiment in countries like Hungary, which is
building a 110-mile fence on its border with Serbia to try to keep migrants out, Mr. Juncker appealed to Europeans in personal terms.
In his first State of the European Union speech
in Strasbourg, France, he urged Europeans to remember their ancestors
who sought refuge from religious persecution, war and famine, and he
warned that Europe had a historical imperative not to look the other
way.
“Let
us be clear and honest with our often-worried citizens,” Mr. Juncker
said, pointing to the root causes of the crisis. “As long as there is
war in Syria and terror in Libya, the refugee crisis will not simply go
away.”
Many
of the migrants are believed to be fleeing war in the Middle East and
Africa, and he said the sight of people sleeping in train stations and
on beaches was unacceptable and must be addressed as winter approaches.
The centerpiece of Mr. Juncker’s speech to the European Parliament
was his formal announcement of an emergency plan, which would be
binding on a majority of member states, to spread the burden of
accommodating 160,000 people, many of whom are flowing into Greece,
Hungary and Italy.
Facing
a migration crisis that has stoked angry passions, European leaders in
June failed to agree on a vague pledge to spread even 40,000 migrants
around the Continent, and it remained unclear whether a quota of 160,000
people, even if accepted, would be sufficient to accommodate a large
influx of migrants to Europe. Germany alone has said it expects to
receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year.
European
governments have been squabbling over how to deal with asylum seekers,
and Mr. Juncker’s comments matched a theme expressed by Chancellor
Angela Merkel of Germany, who earlier in the day repeated her call for
European leaders to reach a binding agreement on the distribution of
them throughout the bloc.
“The
bell tolls, the time has come,” Mr. Juncker said. “We have to look at
the huge issues with which the European Union is now confronted” because
it is “not in a good situation.”
There is “a lack of union in this European Union,” he continued.
“That has to change,” he added.
Opposition
to the emergency plan arose almost immediately after Mr. Juncker ended
his address. “Let’s work out what each country can do to help those
fleeing for their lives,” Syed Kamall, the leader of the British
Conservative Party in the European Parliament, told other lawmakers.
“But
let’s be clear: Telling countries what to do, forcing a plan on them,
only risks more finger-pointing,” he said. “It might make some of you
feel better, but I fear it could actually make the crisis worse.”
But
Mr. Juncker’s plans drew praise from a number of his political
opponents, including Ulrike Lunacek, a lawmaker in the Greens bloc of
the European Parliament who represents Austria. Mr. Juncker’s calls for
“solidarity with refugees” and for European countries “to finally step
up to the plate” were “worthy of respect,” Ms. Lunacek said.
She
also praised Mr. Juncker for having called for a change to European
rules to allow people who have applied for asylum to work and earn money
while their applications were being processed.
Mr.
Juncker used his speech to denounce the leaders of some European Union
member states who have been unwelcoming to migrants, and he said that
allowing more of them would help the economy, rather than damage it, by
adding young workers to the bloc’s aging work force.
Photo
A young migrant wrapped himself in a plastic sheet as he waited to board a ferry on the Greek island of Lesbos on Wednesday.Credit
Petros Giannakouris/Associated Press
He
highlighted efforts of countries like Jordan and Lebanon to accommodate
a larger number of migrants than their richer European neighbors.
“We
can build walls; we can build fences,” he said, alluding to measures
Hungary has taken. “But imagine for a second if it were you, your child
in your arms, the world you knew torn apart around you. There is no
price you would not pay; there is no wall you would not climb.”
Mr.
Juncker asked home affairs ministers of European Union member states to
approve his plan to accept the 160,000 at their next meeting, on
Monday.
“That’s the number that Europeans have to take in charge, and have to take in their arms,” Mr. Juncker said.
“Action is what is needed for the time being,” he continued.
There is no guarantee that ministers will accept that plan. European Union leaders failed to agree on far more modest quotas at the summit meeting in June, and many governments must contend with the growing support of populist or anti-immigrant groups.
Countries like the Czech Republic and Hungary are likely to continue resisting any binding or permanent quotas.
But the discovery last month of more than 70 dead migrants in a truck abandoned on the side of an Austrian highway and the photograph of a young Syrian boy
whose body was found on a beach in Turkey have increased the resolve of
policy makers like Mr. Juncker to ensure that Europe does a better job
of managing the influx.
France,
which had been hostile to permanent quotas, now supports Germany on the
need to share the burden of taking in asylum seekers among all European
countries.
The
plan would require states to pay a small percentage of their gross
domestic product, amounting to 0.002 percent of it, to help finance the
efforts of neighboring countries if they cannot participate.
Any
such temporary exemption would last 12 months and be decided “case by
case,” Frans Timmermans, the first vice president of the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, told a news conference in Strasbourg after Mr. Juncker’s speech.
Photo
Jean-Claude Juncker, the
president of the European Commission, left, said on Wednesday that there
is “a lack of union in this European Union.”Credit
Frederick Florin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Only
a country “in dire trouble because of a natural catastrophe or another
reason and can therefore not take its fair share for a given period of
time” would be eligible for the option, said Mr. Timmermans, adding that
nations should not be allowed to “buy themselves out of solidarity.”
In
his bid to win support from even more member states, Mr. Juncker
leveled thinly veiled criticism at Hungary, where Prime Minister Viktor
Orban has warned that Christian traditions in Europe are under threat
from newcomers from Muslim countries.
Last
week, Mr. Orban said that Hungarians “do not want a large number of
Muslim people” in their country, and Mr. Juncker suggested that such an
approach was completely unacceptable.
“Europe
has made the mistake in the past of distinguishing between Jews,
Christians, Muslims,” Mr. Juncker said. “There is no religion, no
belief, no philosophy when it comes to refugees.”
To
speed up the processing of asylum applications, Mr. Juncker said the
European Commission planned to propose a list of countries that are
deemed safe, to which migrants originating from those countries would be
sent back. He noted that the list should include candidate countries
for accession to the European Union, like the western Balkans.
Mr.
Juncker said that Europe should learn from its history and appeared to
point a moral finger at European nations demonizing asylum seekers from
Muslim countries.
He
also mentioned the large number of people from Ireland, Poland and
Scotland who had emigrated to the United States, suggesting that
immigration was a source of cultural richness rather than an impediment.
Addressing
the root causes of the migration crisis, he also proposed that the
European Union create an emergency fund of 1.8 billion euros, or more
than $2 billion, to help African countries.
In
Germany, Ms. Merkel has repeatedly emphasized the importance of
equitable contributions from all members of the European Union in
addressing the migration crisis.
“The
current refugee crisis cannot be handled solely at the national level,”
Ms. Merkel said in a speech to Parliament on Wednesday. “It is a
challenge for the European Union, for every member of the European
Union.”
Ms. Merkel said that European Union member states needed to agree on a way to distribute the arrivals equitably across the bloc.
Over
the past week, Ms. Merkel’s government has taken measures to help the
thousands of people pouring into Germany. A package valued at €6 billion
was announced on Monday, and legislative changes affecting how asylum
seekers’s applications are processed and how to get them into the work
force more quickly are expected to come to a vote in Parliament within a
month.
“We
need to change,” she said, “and it won’t help anyone to point fingers
and exchange blame over who didn’t do what, but we all need to go at
this so that we can help the people arriving in our country.”
Melissa Eddy contributed reporting from Berlin, and Dan Bilefsky from London.
copy http://www.nytimes.com/
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário