Tag Archives: Europe

Italy’s bank troubles test European Central Bank’s mettle

MILAN (Reuters) – The European Central Bank is trying to strongarm Italian banks into cleaning up their balance sheets, a year and a half after they fared the worst of all euro zone lenders in its first stress tests as overarching supervisor.

The banks have made scant progress on requested reforms, threatening to undermine a fragile recovery in the bloc’s third largest economy. They argue the ECB’s demands are unrealistic and delay the very consolidation the sector needs.

The standoff poses one of the biggest challenges to Europe’s central bank since it became the euro zone single banking regulator in November 2014. After Greek banks, Italian ones are now taking up most of its time.

Banks like Carige and Monte dei Paschi di Siena have their liquidity monitored daily and the ECB, working in teams with Italy’s central bank, is firing off missives telling lenders to raise capital, find a buyer and sell off bad loans.

“They phone, they e-mail and they come down to see us,” said a source at one Italian bank, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

“They are a constant presence. For one reason or the other there is always an inspection – I’d say they are here two months out of three.”

Letters to Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza, which must raise a combined 2.75 billion euros in cash and list on the market to meet ECB demands, threaten all the measures allowed by the EU banking resolution directive — including the last resort of the ECB removing top executives and taking over management.

A crucial test of the strategy is a much-anticipated merger between Banca Popolare di Milano and Banco Popolare that would be Italy’s first tie-up since the ECB took on supervision.

RENZI WEIGHS IN

The boards of BPM and Banco Popolare are meeting this week and sources close to the matter say Banco Popolare is considering a cash call of up to 1 billion euros as part of measures sought by the ECB to clear the merger.

Any deal would still need the blessing of both banks’ shareholders, including powerful unions who fear a tie-up will lead to job cuts.

Bankers close to the talks say the ECB’s conditions for approving the combination have been so stringent that after months of negotiations, the two banks considered abandoning the deal, which would create Italy’s third biggest bank.

“If this merger falls through, the ECB will have to take responsibility for this,” said a frustrated adviser for one of the banks. “It’s like the doctor killing the patient.”

Danielle Nouy, the ECB’s bank supervisory chief, said on Tuesday the merged bank had to be strong from the start.

“We are working very hard with our Italian colleagues to make sure that we put the adequate requirements, no more than is needed but no less, either,” she told the European parliament.

The ECB is demanding a leaner structure and a business plan for the new group within a month: the original deal outline included a 19-member board, two headquarters, no cash call and Popolare di Milano keeping its autonomy and a separate board for six years.

Prime Minister Matteo Renzi — who last year rammed through a decree intended to encourage banking mergers — weighed in on Friday to put pressure on the lenders to reach an agreement.

A sell-off in Italian banking stocks – some have lost more than half their value so far this year – and a flight of deposits from banks seen as more vulnerable, means the government feels time is running out.

“2016 is the year when Italy must sort out its banking problems once and for all,” Renzi said.

ECB’S CREDIBILITY DRIVE

Analysts say the ECB, which is headed by former Bank of Italy chief Mario Draghi, wants to establish itself as a credible institution, ensuring Europe’s banking industry is on a sound footing and taking laggards to task.

“The regulator is being extra cautious and particularly severe and active when it comes to Italy but the situation warrants it,” said Andrea Resti, an adviser to the European Parliament on banking supervision.

After a three-year recession, Italy’s banks are saddled with 360 billion euros ($405 billion) of bad loans – one third of the European total and equivalent to one fifth of Italy’s output.

Banks are reluctant to sell soured debts quickly, fearing that would blow a hole in their accounts and force them to raise cash in rough markets.

One reason for the sector’s fragility is the fragmented financial industry with 650 banks, most of which are tiny lenders with patronage ties to local communities. “It’s not that banks in other countries don’t have problems, but in Italy it’s more widespread, because you have lots of small banks that do not have the shock absorption capacity you find in bigger banks,” said Nicolas Veron, a financial services expert at think-tank Bruegel in Brussels. “A third of the banks that failed the ECB tests were Italian, but since then not much has happened.”

BAD MEMORIES

The unresolved problems of Italy’s banking sector also serve as a reminder of the scars left by the euro zone debt crisis.

The banks’ large holdings of government bonds plummeted in value as the cost of servicing Italy’s debt, the world’s fourth largest, soared at the height of the crisis.

Rome said then it did not need a Spanish-style, EU-funded bailout for its banks, but only the ECB’s pledge to save the euro and its cheap long-term loans halted the vicious circle of sovereign risks sinking the country’s lenders.

Now the government’s hands are tied, because under tougher European rules that came into force this year any rescue of weaker banks would wipe out shareholders and impose losses on creditors and perhaps even large depositors.

Italians got a bitter foretaste of the new regime when the government salvaged four tiny banks in November and 12,000 retail bond holders lost their savings.

Bankers under the microscope say ECB supervisors have uneasy relations with the Bank of Italy, which also declined to comment for this article.

“There is an atmosphere of mistrust and they think Italian banks have been let off the hook for too long by the national regulator,” said a senior investment banker involved in the merger negotiations between the two cooperative banks.

“The ECB is really giving us a hard time.”

(additional reporting by Paola Arosio in Milan, Stefano Bernabei in Rome and Francesco Canepa in Frankfurt; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

Greece asks EU partners for help to make migrant deal work

LESBOS, Greece (Reuters) – Greece asked its European partners on Monday for help implementing a deal with Turkey meant to stem an influx of migrants into Europe, as hundreds more – many unaware of the new rules – streamed from their boats onto Greek islands.

For months the epicenter of Europe’s biggest migrant crisis since World War Two, Greece is struggling to effect the logistics operation needed to process asylum applications from hundreds of migrants still arriving daily along its shoreline.

Turkish officials arrived on the island of Lesbos on Monday to help put the deal into practice. Anyone who arrived after March 20 must be held until their papers are processed and those deemed ineligible are to be sent back to Turkey from April 4.

Late on Monday, a first group of 150 migrants from Pakistan and Bangladesh were transferred – handcuffed and under police escort – from the island’s registration center to a passenger ferry that would take them to the mainland by early morning.

They had arrived on Lesbos on Sunday and would be taken to immigration offices in Athens, a police spokesman said.

Under the EU-Turkey roadmap agreed last Friday, a plan must be made by March 25 and some 4,000 personnel – more than half from other European Union member states – deployed to the islands by next week.

“We must move very swiftly and in a coordinated manner over the next few days to get the best possible result,” Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said after meeting EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos in Athens.

“Assistance in human resources must come quickly.”

Avramopoulos said France, Germany and the Netherlands had already pledged logistics and personnel.

“We are at a crucial turning point … The management of the refugee crisis for Europe as a whole hinges on the progress and success of this agreement,” he said.

However, on Monday, the day after the formal start of an agreement intended to close off the main route through which a million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe last year, authorities said 1,662 people had arrived on Greek islands by 7 a.m. (0500 GMT), twice the official count of the day before.

REFUGEES UNDETERRED

Just after 4:30 a.m. on Monday, one coastguard vessel rescued 54 refugees and migrants from the open sea and brought them to the port, some of the 698 arrivals counted in Lesbos.

They staggered down the ramp, women and children first, one elderly man bundled up in blankets.

“Where are we going?” asked one Syrian woman who was traveling with her husband and daughter.

The group were directed to a coastguard bus that would drive them to the Moria “hot spot”, a center where new arrivals are being registered and their asylum applications processed.

“We are very tired. I want to go to my family in Sweden,” said Ahmet Bayraktar, a 32-year-old unemployed accountant from Aleppo, Syria. “We’ll try, God willing.”

Like others, he was unaware of the new EU-Turkey accord.

“We don’t know about this,” Bayraktar said. “We’re coming directly from Syria. Everybody wants to go to the border. We don’t have the news, we don’t have electricity, we don’t have anything.”

Two hours later, just as the sun rose above the Aegean Sea, the same coastguard vessel pulled another 44 people from the water. One woman cradled a baby just a few months old.

They walked silently to the bus for Moria, a sprawling, gated complex of prefabricated containers and tents.

“IT’S BETTER THAN SYRIA”

Before Friday’s deal, migrants and refugees had been free to wander out of the camp and head to ferries to the Greek mainland, from where they would mostly head north through the Balkans towards wealthier western Europe, especially Germany.

Now, new arrivals are supposed to be held in centers pending the outcome of their asylum applications.

Under the deal, for every Syrian returned to Turkey, another would be resettled from Turkey within the European Union, a process which has already triggered alarm from human rights groups for being discriminatory, a violation of international law and one which could be challenged in court.

Some diplomats believe the accord could unravel within months because neither side looks able to deliver on its commitments, but that the need to get the migration crisis under control is so urgent that it was felt best to clinch a deal now and deal with shortcomings later.

The fate of the nearly 47,000 migrants, stranded in Greece when countries along the Balkan route shut their borders a few weeks ago, remains unclear.

Hundreds of migrants traveling from the islands to the Greek mainland disembarked on Monday at the port of Pireaus near Athens. They appeared free to leave because they had landed in Greece before Sunday, witnesses said.

Some migrants said they would try to reach Idomeni, a northern Greek frontier outpost where some 12,000 refugees and migrants remain stranded, hoping that Macedonia will reopen the border and let them pass through.

“I will try to go to the border with Macedonia within the next 10 days even if it’s closed. Maybe I will have to come back here, maybe not, but anyway it’s better than Syria,” said Hozefa Hasdibo, 23, from Idlib in Syria.

(Additional reporting by Lefteris Karagiannopoulos and Renee Maltezou; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Shaky EU-Turkey migrant deal faces tough reality checks

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A deal between the European Union and Turkey meant to curb the flow of migrants into Europe in return for financial and political rewards could unravel within months because neither side looks able to deliver on its commitments.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and European Council President Donald Tusk wore relieved smiles on Friday as they sealed a pact for Ankara to take back all migrants and refugees who cross to Greece in exchange for more money, faster visa-free travel for Turks and slightly accelerated EU membership talks.

But for Turkey to halt the flow of migrants to Europe will require a major redeployment of its security apparatus to shut down a lucrative people-smuggling business at a time when President Tayyip Erdogan has more pressing priorities.

With impeccable timing, Turkish authorities announced they had detained 3,000 would-be migrants on Friday, but Greek officials say Ankara has done little to stop the flow since November, when the EU and Turkey made a first deal.

Yet Erdogan is more focused on extending his presidential powers, fighting Kurdish militants and preventing spillover from Syria’s civil war.

For Greece to be able to process and send back those migrants who continue to reach its islands would require a transformation of its threadbare asylum and justice systems with scant resources and uncertain EU assistance. The European Court of Human rights considers Athens’ system so poor that it ruled that sending migrants back there from other European countries was inhumane.

Yet the new arrangements are supposed to start from Sunday, with the first returns set for April 4. One EU diplomat said that was like expecting Greece to turn itself into the Netherlands over a weekend.

For the EU to resettle, as promised, thousands of legal Syrian refugees directly from Turkey – one for each Syrian returned from the Greek islands – will require most member states to take in more refugees than they have been willing to share out so far. In the current climate of anti-immigration populism in many countries, that may be a tall order.

The joint statement did not spell out who would return potentially unwilling migrants from Greece to Turkey, a task that may fall to the EU’s Frontex border agency under the critical gaze of the media and humanitarian groups. Greek officials say they are worried it could turn violent.

Images of Afghans, Iraqis or Syrians being removed against their will could lead to an international outcry.

In a foretaste, rights group Amnesty International posted a harrowing picture of refugees cowering behind barbed wire outside the EU summit center with the slogan “Don’t trade refugees. Stop the deal!”

LOGISTICAL CHALLENGE

Greece already faces a huge logistical challenge with 43,000 migrants bottled up in the economically ravaged country since its northern neighbors shut their borders, and more continuing to arrive daily, albeit at a slower pace.

And all this is before the summer weather and calmer seas that facilitated last year’s mass influx.

For the EU to give Turks visa-free travel by the end of June also requires a leap of faith, since Ankara has so far met fewer than half of the 72 conditions. European officials stress the ball is in Turkey’s court to pass the necessary laws and change its visa regime with other, notably Muslim countries.

The EU managed to sidestep a potential stumbling block over Cyprus by agreeing to limit Turkey’s progress in snail’s pace membership negotiations to one policy area – budget – which Nicosia has not blocked.

That got around a standoff over Ankara’s refusal to open Turkish ports and airports to Cypriot traffic. A late addition to the agreement also reminds Ankara of its commitments to the Turkey-EU customs union under which it should open its ports.

If both sides are lucky, the vexed Cyprus issue may not impinge on the migration deal for months, leaving time for peace talks now under way that may lead to the reunification of the east Mediterranean island after more than 40 years of division.

EU leaders desperate to stop the chaotic migration flow were willing to suspend their disbelief and swallow legal qualms – at least in public – because they had no better alternative.

But they have few illusions.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the deal’s co-architect, said there were bound to be setbacks and big legal challenges but she hoped the deal had “irreversible momentum”.

Tusk, who chaired the summit, said the deal was the best the EU could do for now. “A piece of something is better than a piece of nothing,” he said.

“There are many bits of this deal that clearly don’t add up,” a senior EU official acknowledged. “Much of the details will be left to be worked out at lower level later on.”

The optimistic version, voiced by Dutch Foreign Minister Bert Koenders, is that some “intelligent synchronization” can be found between the Cyprus peace process and Turkey’s migration deal. Critics say that is just EU wishful thinking.

‘NO BETTER PLAN’

Some experts believe Turkish leaders don’t expect the EU to keep its word on visas, refugee resettlement or the membership talks and are planning to turn a predictable failure to domestic political advantage.

“Davutoglu and Erdogan know perfectly well that neither side will deliver,” said Michael Leigh, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund think-tank and a former director-general of the EU’s enlargement department.

“What Erdogan wants is a constitutional power change … so he will present it at the right moment as a European betrayal and call a vote to get more powers,” Leigh said.

At most, he said, the EU could fulfill the financial part of the bargain if Germany pays the lion’s share of the extra 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) Ankara was promised to support Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Sidelined by Merkel when she drafted the outline deal with Davutoglu last week, French President Francois Hollande made clear he would hold Turkey to meeting EU visa standards in full.

“Visas can only be liberalized if all the conditions are met and I remind you there are 72 of them,” Hollande told reporters. A French diplomat said Turkey had only fulfilled 10 benchmarks fully so far and another 26 were under way.

EU diplomats are skeptical that Ankara will be able to meet all the required benchmarks in time, but such is the urgent need to get the migration crisis under control that they would rather clinch a deal now and deal with shortcomings later.

“It’s difficult but everyone has an interest in trying to make this work and no one has a better plan,” a senior EU diplomat said.

($1 = 0.8872 euros)

(Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Pravin Char)

EU, Turkey seal deal to return migrants, but is it legal?

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union sealed a controversial deal with Turkey on Friday intended to halt illegal migration flows to Europe in return for financial and political rewards for Ankara.

The accord aims to close the main route by which a million migrants and refugees poured across the Aegean Sea to Greece in the last year before marching north to Germany and Sweden.

But deep doubts remain about whether it is legal or workable, a point acknowledged even by German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has been the key driving force behind the agreement.

“I have no illusions that what we agreed today will be accompanied by further setbacks. There are big legal challenges that we must now overcome,” Merkel said after the 28 EU leaders concluded the deal with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu.

“But I think we’ve reached an agreement that has an irreversible momentum,” Merkel said, adding it showed that the EU was still capable of taking difficult decisions and managing complex crises.

Under the pact, Ankara would take back all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who cross to Greece illegally across the sea. In return, the EU would take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with more money, early visa-free travel and faster progress in EU membership talks.

Migrants who arrive in Greece from Sunday will be subject to being sent back once they have been registered and their individual asylum claim processed. The returns are to begin on April 4, as would resettlement of Syrian refugees in Europe.

While many in Brussels hailed the agreement as a game-changer, Amnesty International decried it as a “historic blow to human rights”, saying Europe was turning its back on refugees.

“Guarantees to scrupulously respect international law are incompatible with the touted return to Turkey of all irregular migrants,” the rights advocacy group said, criticizing Ankara’s track-record on human rights.

“Turkey is not a safe country for refugees and migrants, and any return process predicated on it being so will be flawed, illegal and immoral.”

Turkey’s human rights record has drawn mounting criticism amid a crackdown on Kurdish separatists, arrests of critical journalists and the seizure of its best-selling newspaper.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte sought to reverse the narrative, saying the idea was to discourage illegal and perilous voyages across the Aegean and open legal paths to Europe instead.

“There is nothing humanitarian in letting people, families, children, step on boats, being tempted by cynical smugglers, and risk their lives,” he said.

DOABLE?

The EU would also accelerate disbursement of 3 billion euros already pledged in support for refugees in Turkey and provide a further 3 billion by 2018. It would help Greece set up a task force of some 4,000 staff, including judges, interpreters, border guards and others to manage each case individually.

“All new irregular migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands as from 20 March 2016 will be returned to Turkey. This will take place in full accordance with EU and international law, excluding any kind of collective expulsion,” the deal said.

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said it would be a Herculean task for Greece to handle the returns and the chairman of the EU leaders’ summits, European Council President Donald Tusk, said the deal was not a silver bullet.

“Reality is more complex,” Tusk said, noting a broader EU strategy to control migration that included keeping the land route from Greece to Germany closed to irregular migrants.

Just as the deal was clinched, Turkey said it had intercepted hundreds of migrants trying to reach the Greek island of Lesbos.

“It’s a historic day today because we reached a very important agreement between Turkey and the EU,” Davutoglu said. “Today we realized that Turkey and EU have the same destiny, the same challenges and the same future.”

Turkey’s four-decade-old dispute with Cyprus had been a key stumbling block. Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades insisted there could be no opening of new “chapters” in Turkey’s EU talks until Ankara de facto recognizes the Cypriot state.

But the issue was sidestepped as EU leaders agreed to open a negotiating chapter that was not one of the five blocked by Nicosia. Anastasiades said he was “fully satisfied” after the sides agreed to swiftly open only chapter 33 on budget policy.

Ankara’s central objective — visa-free travel for Turks to Europe by June — would still depend on Turkey meeting 72 long-standing EU criteria.

Facing a backlash from anti-immigration populists across Europe, the EU is desperate to stem the influx but faced legal obstacles to blanket returns of migrants to Turkey.

EU partners would provide additional manpower and resources to help Athens cope with the new challenge and with a backlog of 43,000 migrants already bottled up on its territory.

While the talks were in progress, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan accused the EU of hypocrisy over migrants, human rights and terrorism, as supporters of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) set up protest tents near the summit venue.

Erdogan said Europe was “dancing in a minefield” by directly or indirectly supporting terrorist groups.

“At a time when Turkey is hosting three million, those who are unable to find space for a handful of refugees, who in the middle of Europe keep these innocents in shameful conditions, must first look at themselves,” he said in a televised speech.

(Reporting by Renee Maltezou, Robin Emmott, Paul Taylor, Andreas Rinke, Gabriela Baczynska, Julia Fioretti, Jan Strupczewski, Humeyra Pamuk, Alastair Macdonald, Elizabeth Pineau, Tom Koerkemeir in Brussels and Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul, Writing by Paul Taylor and Gabriela Baczynska, Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Catherine Evans)

European cities join hands to stay afloat in migrant crisis

BARCELONA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – As hundreds of asylum seekers from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere make the risky journey across the Aegean Sea each day to reach Europe, the Greek island of Lesbos faces the problem of what to do with the discarded dinghies piling up on its shores.

Help may be at hand, thanks to an agreement signed this week between the Lesbos municipality and Barcelona. Environmental technicians from the Spanish city will advise on how to deal with the waste piling up on the island, which lies just a few miles from the Turkish coast.

Under the deal, Barcelona city council will also share environmental and logistical expertise with the southern Italian island of Lampedusa, which has seen a huge influx of migrants crossing from North Africa.

The agreement is just one example of cooperation between city and town halls across Europe to try to cope with the continent’s worst refugee crisis since World War Two.

These efforts are a response to a lack of support from national governments and the European Union, experts told a conference on resilient cities in Barcelona this week.

“The debate is taking place very remotely from the people who are ultimately going to be charged with the responsibility of housing, servicing, supporting and integrating refugees,” said Dan Lewis, head of UN-Habitat’s urban risk reduction unit. “(Cities) don’t have a voice in this.”

Eighty to 90 percent of refugees coming to Europe are likely to settle in cities, and many will stay for years, Lewis said.

Those cities will have to try and create dignified lives for refugees – yet there are limited resources and policy measures to help them deal with migration pressures, he added.

“The question of resources and the distribution of resources hasn’t been resolved at state level yet,” he said. “The only other option is for the cities to generate their own.”

SOLIDARITY

That is why cities are setting up solidarity networks, such as that launched by Barcelona this week. Some are also committing their own financial resources to tackle the crisis.

Barcelona city council said on Tuesday it would triple financial aid for refugees in transit to $340,000, responding to the “humanitarian consequences of the decision by European states to close the Balkans route”.

The one thing Barcelona cannot do for now is take in more refugees, as it is blocked by bureaucracy at national level.

On Wednesday, Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau sent a letter to the Spanish prime minister asking for official permission for the Catalan capital to accept 100 refugees now in Athens.

“Barcelona could be hosting and welcoming some of these people – why couldn’t we have an agreement between two cities to relocate (refugees)?” Colau asked, sitting beside Athens Mayor Giorgos Kaminis.

Colau told the Thomson Reuters Foundation she could not say how many asylum seekers Barcelona could resettle, nor when they might arrive, as Spain struggles to form a new government.

“(Madrid) has not responded to the cities and autonomous communities that have said we want to help and are prepared to help,” she told the conference.

INTEGRATION

Kaminis said the Greek capital – through which some 80 percent of the more than 900,000 refugees to arrive from Turkey since the start of 2015 have passed – is receiving support from the United Nations to house 50,000 people in apartments and camps.

“Many of these people are going to stay in Greece – some for the coming years, and many forever – and we need to be ready for the challenge of integrating them into our society,” he said.

The mayors said it was important to find ways to ease tensions between newcomers and city locals, such as making clear that rules to protect people’s rights apply to all.

Colau called for European countries to allow asylum seekers to work, so they can integrate into society and start a regular life.

A well-considered, inclusive approach to migration would help overcome fears about its potential negative impacts – which are generally unfounded, experts told the Barcelona conference.

Immigration has always helped meet demand for labor and spurred economic and scientific development, innovation and culture, said Josep Roig, head of United Cities and Local Governments, a global network.

“Migration and mobility are often portrayed and perceived as a threat, and a burden for local communities rather than an opportunity and benefit – this is a contradiction of reality,” he said.

(Reporting by Megan Rowling; editing by Ros Russell.)

Desperate migrants’ hopes fade ahead of EU leaders’ meeting

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Refugees stuck at the closed border crossing between Greece and Macedonia have little hope that a summit of EU leaders on the migrant crisis this week will lead to any improvement in their desperate plight.

European Union leaders will hold talks in Brussels on Thursday with Turkey’s prime minister to try to hammer out a deal to end the continent’s worst migrant crisis since World War Two.

But the deal will entail returning the migrants holed up in Greece to Turkey, including more than 10,000 people living in the tent city near Idomeni on the Macedonian border who want only to be allowed to continue their trek northwards to Germany and other wealthier west European countries.

“Nothing will change (due to the summit),” said Hussam Jackl, a 25-year-old Syrian law student who fled to Lebanon two years ago and, after working there illegally as a photographer, sold his equipment to pay a smuggler to bring him to Europe.

He has spent more than two weeks in rain-soaked Idomeni, where migrants’ shoes have taken on the same muddy brown hue of the fields and children stand knee-deep in dirt.

“If the borders remain closed I’m thinking of killing myself,” said Jackl. “I’m thinking seriously of killing myself if there is no solution.”

He held up a piece of cardboard in protest: “Dear Sun, please shine on us, it’s very cold here. They are not going to let us in but we have nowhere to go back.”

“NO OTHER CHOICE”

Most of the migrants have fled conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. They are unable to continue their journey because Macedonia and other countries along the so-called Balkan route have shut their borders to the migrants.

“We have nothing – no money, no clean clothes, no clothes to face the bad weather,” said Mazari, 20, who traveled from Afghanistan with her three children. One of the children drowned as they crossed from Turkey to Greece in an inflatable boat.

“I’ll stay here as long as it takes to cross (into Macedonia),” she sobbed. “I have no other choice.”

Humanitarian organizations on the ground say several hundred people have moved to two petrol stations near the camp because of the bad weather, while others have returned to Athens.

Sanitary conditions have deteriorated and concern about the spread of infection has risen.

Waiting in line for clothes and shoes for his nephew, 18-year-old Ismail Sayed, who left Afghanistan in the hope of reaching Germany to study civil engineering, said all he could do was wait.

“I don’t have anything back in Afghanistan. I sold everything,” he said. “We want only one thing from European leaders: to open the borders. We want a proper future.”

(Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Pope Francis urges Europe to ‘open hearts and doors’ to suffering migrants

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Pope Francis appealed to nations on Wednesday to “open their hearts and open their doors” to migrants, saying those waiting at closed European borders in the cold and rain were made to feel like exiles abandoned by God.

Over 1.1 million migrants fleeing war and failed states flowed into the European Union in 2015 and the influx has continued, prompting countries straddling the main migration corridor through the Balkans to the wealthy north of the EU to seal their borders, trapping tens of thousands in Greece.

“How many of our brothers these days are living through a real and dramatic situation of exile, far from their homelands. In their eyes they still have the ruins of their homes,” Pope Francis told tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square.

“They have fear in their hearts and unfortunately, often, the pain of having lost loved their ones,” Francis, who has made defense of migrants a major plank of his three-year-old papacy, said in mostly improvised remarks.

Macedonia trucked 1,500 migrants back to Greece after they forced their way across the border this week. Images of exhausted migrants fording a fast-moving stream in the cold were splashed across Italian newspapers this week.

“Immigrants today are suffering outdoors, without food, and cannot get in. They don’t feel welcome,” Pope Francis said, praising “nations and leaders who open their hearts and open their doors.

“How is it possible that so much suffering can befall innocent men, women and children? … They are there at the border because so many doors and so many hearts are closed.”

The two small parishes inside the Vatican walls are each hosting a family of refugees, one of them Syrian.

EU efforts to seal a deal with Turkey to halt the migrant tide from that country into Europe in return for political and economic rewards stumbled on Tuesday when EU member Cyprus vowed to block it unless Ankara recognized its nationhood.

(Reporting by Philip Pullella; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

‘It felt like a death machine,’ says migrant forced back to Greece

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – It took Hassan Omar four long hours to cross into Macedonia, his wheelchair pushed by strangers across the muddy paths of Greece’s border – but a day later he found himself back at the squalid migrant camp he had left.

Like scores of people, many from war zones in Syria and Iraq, who streamed out of the camp near the Greek town of Idomeni on Monday and crossed into Macedonia, he was rounded up and sent back.

“We were surprised to see the army there,” said Omar, who fled fighting in Iraq, recounting how one man carried him for hours during their 8 km (5-mile) trek, up mountains and through valleys.

“They were very harsh with us. It felt like a death machine, not humans dealing with us,” he said.

An estimated 1,500 people left the camp on Monday trying to find a way past the razor-wire fence erected by Macedonia, on a route they hoped would take them to Germany and other wealthy European Union countries.

Most were picked up by Macedonian security forces, put into trucks and driven back over the border late on Monday or overnight, a Macedonian police official said.

The Macedonian action was part of a drive by Western Balkans states to shut down a migration route from Greece to Germany used by nearly a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and Asia over the last year in Europe’s biggest refugee influx since World War Two.

Greek authorities said they could not confirm the return as there had been no official contact from the Macedonian side, but those who arrived back at the camp recounted their experiences on Tuesday.

One man from the northern Syrian province of Raqqa, who gave his name as Abdo, said Macedonian authorities divided the detainees into groups of 25 to 50 people, put them in cars and dropped them off at the border.

“They told us to run, so we started to run,” he said.

CHILDREN

Authorities estimate at least 12,000 people, including thousands of children, have been stranded in the Idomeni camp, where sanitary conditions have deteriorated after days of heavy rain. Concern about the spread of infection grew after one person was diagnosed with Hepatitis A.

It was unclear why so many people made for the border on Monday, but Greek officials say leaflets that circulated at the Idomeni camp before the march showed it was a planned action.

Sixty-year-old Syrian Mohammad Kattan, who hoped to be reunited with his family in Serbia, said it had taken him six hours to trudge to the border.

“At my age it was very difficult,” he said, bundled up in a thick blanket. “My hope was to get to Macedonia … so that I could continue on to another country.”

Downcast and exhausted, he returned along with a second group of migrants, numbering about 600, who were prevented from even crossing the border by Macedonian security forces.

They waded back knee-deep through the icy river near the border on Tuesday, some barefoot, others weighed down by children and their worldly belongings on their shoulders.

On the riverbank, men and women stood around a fire drying their feet and clothes. One woman sobbed, her face framed by a pink headscarf. Others dragged their belongings across the dirt, and pulled along their children in fruit baskets.

A Syrian woman who gave her name as Nasreem described how she sheltered her children overnight with plastic bags and said she believed they would finally be “done with all the rain and the cold” when they arrived at the border.

“But they didn’t let us through.”

(Writing by Karolina Tagaris; Editing by Pravin Char)

Migrants return to Greek camp after Macedonia sends them back

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Hundreds of dejected migrants returned to a transit camp in northern Greece on Tuesday after Macedonian authorities blocked their attempt to cross the border or drove those who did get across back to Greece.

Around 2,000 migrants marched out of the Idomeni camp on Monday, hiking into the mountains and fording a river in what Greek authorities said was a well-planned attempt to find a way around a barbed wire fence built by Macedonia to keep them out.

Three migrants drowned on Monday trying to cross a river into Macedonia, one stage on a route that the migrants hoped would take them to Germany and other wealthy European Union countries.

Macedonia loaded about 1,500 migrants and refugees who had succeeded in crossing the border onto trucks and drove them back to Greece, Macedonian police said. Reporters and aid officials said the migrants were left at the Greek border.

Hundreds more migrants were prevented from crossing the border on Monday. Many of them streamed back to Idomeni on Tuesday after spending the night in the mountains.

Migrants carried children across a fast-flowing river before trudging back along muddy paths. One small child was dragged along on a blue plastic container attached to a rope.

“It’s a long way from the camp to the mountains, it took me six hours of walking. At my age it was very difficult,” said one of those returning, 60-year-old Mohammad Kattan.

Back in Idomeni, the camp was crowded, muddy and wet. People started fires to dry their clothes and to warm up. Several hundred migrants found shelter in a deserted farm in the area.

Greek officials said they could not confirm that Macedonia had sent back the migrants.

“No one has been returned from our official border crossings, and no request has been submitted by Skopje (the Macedonian capital),” said George Kyritsis, a spokesman for Greece’s migration coordination center:

Ties between the two neighbors are fraught because of Greece’s long-standing refusal to recognize Macedonia’s name, which is the same as that of a northern Greek province.

At least 12,000 people, including thousands of children, have been stranded in the Idomeni camp, their path to the EU blocked after Balkan nations closed their borders.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said on Tuesday there was “no chance” that borders which had been shut down throughout the Balkans would be re-opened. He urged refugees to move to reception centers set up by the state.

European Union leaders, trying to stem a flow of migrants and refugees fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, are due to hold a new summit with Turkey this week to seal an agreement intended to halt the exodus.

Jan van’t Land, an official with medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres at Idomeni, said around 400 migrants had returned to the camp.

“There are still many hundreds of people on both the Greek and the Macedonian side of the border,” he told Reuters.

EU Migration Commission Dimitris Avramopoulos, on a visit to Idomeni, urged EU countries to put into action immediately a long-stalled plan to re-house asylum seekers from Greece elsewhere in the bloc.

“Our aim is within the next two weeks to reach the level of 6,000 to be relocated every week,” he told reporters. “All our values are in danger today and you can see it here in Idomeni. I believe that building fences, deploying barbed wire, is not a solution.”

Conditions at the Idomeni camp have deteriorated after days of heavy rain. Concern about the spread of infection grew after one person was diagnosed with Hepatitis A.

(Additional reporting by Kole Casule in Skopje, Ivana Sekularac in Belgrade, Renee Maltezou and Karolina Tagaris in Athens, writing by Adrian Croft, editing by Larry King)

Greece struggles to convince stranded migrants that Balkan route is shut

ATHENS/IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – Tens of thousands of refugees and migrants were stuck in camps and ports across Greece on Friday as authorities struggled to convince them that the main passage to reach wealthy northern Europe has shut.

By early morning hundreds more people, many from the Middle East and Africa, had reached Greek islands, days after the shutdowns along the “Balkan route” were imposed.

Their arrival helped swell the number of those stuck across the country to over 42,000. At a sprawling, muddy tent city near the northern border town of Idomeni, 12,000 people, among them thousands of children and babies, waited to cross to Macedonia.

“These people maintain the hope that a number of them will cross to the north,” Citizen Protection Minister Nikos Toskas told Greek TV. “We’re trying to convince them … that the Balkan route has closed.”

Further south, more than 3,500 people waited at the main port of Piraeus near Athens after having arrived on ships from the eastern Aegean islands.

“At Piraeus we spent five hours trying to get people on buses and take them to a camp, but they didn’t want to board,” Toskas said. “They think that once you reach Idomeni, you cross to central Europe.”

Scuffles have broken out at Idomeni this week as destitute migrants and refugees scrambled for food and firewood. Tensions flared briefly on Friday and at least one man was injured, with blood streaming down his face, during a handout of supplies.

Many have slept in the open, often in the rain and low temperatures.

“In Syria we are fighting ISIS (Islamic State militants), now we are fighting nature and I think its worse,” said Ali, a Syrian refugee from Aleppo who has been in Greece for 20 days. “ISIS have a limit but nature (has) no limit,” he told Reuters.

EU READY TO HELP

Greece has been the main entry point into Europe for more than a million refuges and migrants since last year. More than 130,000 people have arrived this year alone, stretching the country’s limited resources.

So far, Greece has the capacity to host 30,000 people at camps and centers across the country and aims to raise that to 50,000 by next week, Deputy Defense Minister Dimitris Vitsas said.

“We need to convince these people, in every possible, non-violent way, that there are shelters in mainland Greece to host them,” he told Greek radio.

The EU launched a new aid program last week worth an initial 700 million euros. Greece, its economy blighted by the euro zone debt crisis, was expected to be the main beneficiary of the scheme.

During a visit to Athens on Friday, the EU’s commissioner for humanitarian aid, Christos Stylianides, reiterated the EU’s support and said the bloc stood ready to help Greece with further funds.

“We have a moral duty as Europeans to offer this help to refugees,” Stylianides told reporters after meeting Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, adding other European funds were available besides humanitarian help.

Macedonia, which erected a razor wire fence at its border with Greece, criticized Greece on Friday for doing too little despite the support it has received.

“The get all they want. The only problem is they’re doing nothing with it,” Macedonian President Gjorge Ivanov was quoted as telling German daily Bild.

(Additional reporting by Renee Maltezou and Lefteris Karagiannopoulos in Athens, Michael Nienaber in Berlin and Stoyan Nenov in Idomeni; Writing by Karolina Tagaris)