CFR Deaily News Brief: EU Parliament Backs New Migrant Relocation Plan

September 10, 2015 Daily News Brief

TOP OF THE AGENDA EU Parliament Backs New Migrant Relocation Plan The EU Parliament overwhelmingly backed (AFP) European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker's proposal to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers, adding pressure for member states to embrace a system of quotas. The plan seeks to ease the burden on Greece, Hungary, and Italy, where most migrants have arrived. After temporarily suspending rail links to Germany, Denmark reopened (Belfast Telegraph) trains and said that its police would not stop migrants traveling through the country en route to other destinations. Meanwhile, more than 3,200 asylum seekers crossed (Guardian) into Hungary on Wednesday as Budapest considers deploying troops to the country’s southern border to curb migrant crossings. Macedonia is also mulling (Reuters) building a fence along its border with Greece after seven thousand migrants arrived in Montenegro earlier this week. The EU will meet on September 14 to address Europe's escalating migration crisis.

ANALYSIS "The debate over refugees is shaking the very foundations of the union. No one knows that better than EU Commission President Juncker. […] In recent decades, there hasn't been a single strategic decision made for Europe that didn't bear Juncker's fingerprints in some way. When he took office as head of the EU's executive 10 months ago, he promised to put a political face on Brussels, an apparatus of bureaucrats. Now the crisis has a face—tens of thousands of faces, in fact. And Juncker's Commission is acting like an agency full of gray-haired public servants who aren't up to the task of the century," writes Der Spiegel. "That responsibility falls not on Europe alone, but the world as a whole. It needs a co-ordinated policy to manage the Syrian crisis along the entire chain of displacement. There must be a concerted effort to contain the war, starting with the creation of protected havens. UN agencies, buckling under the strain, must be properly funded. Syria’s neighbours, which have taken in the largest share of refugees, need help to provide education and jobs, not just camps in the desert. America, Western countries and especially the rich monarchies of the Gulf should resettle many more Syrians—just as 1.8m Indochinese refugees were resettled in the 1970s and 1980s. Transit countries need help to manage human flows and absorb at least some people," writes the Economist. "EU officials will gather to debate Juncker’s proposal in Brussels, where European solidarity will be put to the test by divergent national attitudes about how much national sovereignty to sacrifice—and how much to defend. Historically, European elites have often used crises as opportunities to propel further gains in European integration—in the manner that the French would term ‘fuite en avant’ (or ‘escape forward’). Whether this is possible today, as European leaders court populist support—while the EU technocrats seem distant from the people of Europe—remains to be seen," writes CFR's Stewart Patrick in a blog post.