Tag Archives: Refugee Crisis

Yemen war generates widespread suffering, but few refugees

(Reuters) – Amid Yemen’s misery, two young women living in the war-damaged cities of Aden and Sanaa know they are among the relatively fortunate. They are not starving, their homes have not been destroyed and they have survived bombs and bullets unscathed.

But both long to escape the conflict plunging their country ever deeper into catastrophe. Neither can see a way out.

“I don’t want to lose my life over a dream,” says Nisma al-Ozebi, a 21-year-old civil engineering student in the southern port city of Aden. She hankers for a scholarship that would be her passport to a sanctuary in Europe, but adds: “I don’t want to leave Yemen and live like a refugee.”

Yemen’s civil war intensified sharply almost a year ago when a Saudi-led Arab coalition intervened with air strikes, a naval blockade and ground troops to counter Houthi rebels intent on seizing the whole country.

The Houthis, Zaidi Shi’ite tribesmen now allied with an old enemy, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, are seen by Riyadh as tools of regional arch-foe Iran, a charge they and Tehran deny.

“You feel like death is waiting in every place,” says Kholood al-Absi, 27, who lost her job with an oil services company in Sanaa late last year. “From the air it’s Saudi planes. From the ground it’s Houthis, car bombs, explosions, clashes. You feel the lives of Yemenis are very cheap.”

Reached by telephone at her home in the capital, she says: “I have a valid passport … I’m just ready to go.”

But she admits it’s a fantasy for now. Her family would never let her travel as a single woman, even if she had enough money to study abroad and seek a new life.

Besides, she can’t imagine crowding into a refugee boat for Djibouti. “It’s very dangerous, so I think it’s better for me to die in my home than to die far away,” she laughs.

MALNOURISHED CHILDREN

About 170,000 people have fled Yemen so far, mostly to Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan. Most of them are not Yemenis, but returning refugees and other foreigners. The United Nations expects another 167,000 departures this year.

Given the immense hardships in Yemen, a greater refugee exodus might have been expected. People fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond have flooded into the EU since early 2015 causing a crisis.

However, penned in by ocean and desert, with only Saudi Arabia and Oman as direct neighbours, Yemenis have no easy outlets – although Riyadh now allows those already in the kingdom to stay. Flights out are irregular at best. Former havens such as Jordan now demand visas and set tough conditions.

Mogib Abdullah, a Yemeni spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, says his countrymen have in the past tended not to migrate for work much further than Saudi Arabia, are culturally reluctant to become refugees, and view getting to Europe as a very difficult option.

“People do not really have the courage or means and resources to do it,” he says. “I think they will just have to live with the realities they have. They are trapped and they will continue to be trapped, until the warring parties acknowledge that Yemenis deserve a better life at peace in their own country.”

The war has inflicted a devastating toll on 26 million Yemenis struggling to survive in an already impoverished country beset by acute water scarcity, poor governance and corruption.

The United Nations estimates conservatively 6,000 people have been killed, about half of them civilians. It says four-fifths of Yemenis need outside aid. More than half have poor food supply and at least 320,000 children under five are severely malnourished. Upwards of 2.4 million have been forcibly displaced.

STOLEN DREAMS

Low living standards and education levels in Yemen mean Nisma and Kholood, with their hopes of visas to study in Europe, are the exception, not the rule. But if the war lasts longer, desperation might yet turn a trickle of refugees into a flood.

“I was ambitious, I liked to dream, I had many plans in my head,” says Kholood of her pre-war life. “But the war has stolen everything from me. I’m just thinking maybe I will die today or tomorrow. I feel like I’m dying but still breathing.”

The country she once knew has unraveled.

“Now there is a big gap between Yemenis. Before, all of us, Sunni and Shi’ite, went to the same mosques, gathered in the same places. This war makes us ask which religion, which party, someone belongs to,” she said.

Evidence of worsening poverty is stark. “A lot of people are just begging for money and food. Some are well-educated people who lost their jobs and couldn’t feed their children. This war has stolen their dignity,” Kholood says. “I feel it’s unbearable for me, but my situation is better than a lot of people.”Kholood said she feels lonely because friends had left Yemen, sad because of relatives who had been killed and lacking purpose without the job she loved.

Now, apart from domestic chores, she spends time on Facebook and watching the news, especially a channel that quickly reports the location of air strikes. “When we hear bombs, we go to this channel to see where they are falling,” she says.

Kholood has no love for the Houthis, but her initial support for the Saudi intervention has soured with the passage of time. “We feel it destroyed Yemen. Saudi Arabia and the other countries supporting it … are just killing people without feeling any guilt. A lot of innocent people have been killed, civilians, children.”

MILITARY STALEMATE

No end to the fighting is in sight. The Saudi-led coalition, mostly comprising Sunni Muslim Arab states, has failed to win a clear victory despite its air power and resources.

The Houthis were pushed out of Aden in July by local Sunni militias backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The main fighting has moved to fiercely contested Taiz and closer to the Houthi-held capital Sanaa in the north.

Yet the battle-hardened Houthis are defiant. Holed up in Aden, Saudi-backed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi enjoys international recognition, but little popular support, even among his fellow-southerners.

The war has fueled Sunni-Shi’ite animosities, long muted in Yemen, and deepened rifts between the north and the once-independent south, where separatist sentiment runs high.

Among the main beneficiaries of the mayhem are militants of al Qaeda and the newly implanted Islamic State. This unintended, if predictable, consequence of the war worries Saudi Arabia’s main arms suppliers, the United States, Britain and France.

Yet whatever their misgivings, Western powers provide munitions, intelligence, mid-air refueling and other support for the Saudi-led coalition, despite what a U.N. panel describes as its “widespread and systematic attacks on civilian targets”.

Critics in Yemen and elsewhere accuse the United States and its allies of willingness to sacrifice Yemeni civilian lives to safeguard arms deals with Gulf states worth billions of dollars and to placate Saudi anger over a fragile Western detente with Iran, a suggestion Western officials dismiss.

Caught up in the turmoil are millions of Yemenis, among them Kholood and Nisma, who live in daily fear.

With her father and step-mother away in Jordan for medical reasons, Nisma was left in sole charge of her three younger siblings, including her five-year-old brother Mustafa, when fighting erupted near their home in March 2015.

The Houthis and their allies were assaulting the airport in Aden, which Hadi had declared his temporary capital after being driven from Sanaa. Street battles raged for the next four months. Few supplies reached the blockaded city.

“AFGHANISTAN MODEL”

Nisma and her siblings moved twice in search of safety. First, crammed into a neighbor’s car with a family of five, to an aunt’s house after a missile exploded next door. And then a few days later, when rockets and shells pounded their aunt’s district, to their grandmother’s home.

The family, by now reunited, returned home to Aden’s Khormaksar district when fighting abated in July and to their surprise found it undamaged, unlike many others.

Nisma says a degree of normality has returned, with power and water restored. But she has lost any sense of personal security. “I go out of my house every day expecting I will be killed anywhere, at any time, by any guy,” she says.

Frequent assassinations and attacks by Islamist fighters, other factions and criminal gangs in the last six months illustrate new risks in a once-cosmopolitan Arabian Sea port.

“They say they follow Islamic State, but who knows,” Nisma reflects. “If they are bold enough to stop us and tell us to dress as they want, maybe one day they will lock us in our houses. The Afghanistan model is coming here soon.”

This fear drives her determination to escape a country where any hope for a better future has evaporated.

“Everyone is thinking of leaving, but how and where?”

(Reporting by Alistair Lyon, editing by Peter Millership and William Maclean)

U.N., rights groups say EU-Turkey migrant deal may be illegal

GENEVA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The United Nations and human rights groups warned on Tuesday that a tentative European Union deal to send back all irregular migrants to Turkey in exchange for political and financial rewards could be illegal.

“I am deeply concerned about any arrangement that would involve the blanket return of anyone from one country to another without spelling out the refugee protection safeguards under international law,” U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi told the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

He was speaking hours after the 28 EU leaders sketched an accord with Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu in Brussels that would grant Ankara more money to keep refugees in Turkey, faster visa-free travel for Turks and a speeding up of Ankara’s long-stalled membership talks.

Rights group Amnesty International called the proposed mass return of migrants a “death blow to the right to seek asylum”. Relief charity Doctors without Borders said it was cynical and inhumane.

But the executive European Commission insisted the deal to put an end to a mass influx of more than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, due to be finalised next week, was fully legal.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who pushed for the accord to assuage anxious voters before regional elections on Sunday, said things were finally moving in the right direction after nearly a million Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and others flooded into Germany alone last year. She denied accusations that Turkey was using refugees to blackmail Europe.

The 28 EU leaders were taken by surprise by the bold, last minute Turkish initiative, which went beyond previous plans for more limited cooperation. Unable to sign up to firm commitments immediately, they agreed to wrap up a deal at their next summit on March 17-18 but several points remain sensitive.

Migrants marooned in squalor on Greece’s frontier with Macedonia by the closure of borders further north vowed to keep trying to cross Europe to wealthy Germany, while Syrian refugees in Turkey said they too would not be deterred by the lockdown.

“We will stay here even if we all die,” said Kadriya Jasem, a 25-year-old from Aleppo in Syria, one of 13,000 people living in a makeshift camp in Idomeni on the Greek side of the border with Macedonia.

ONE-FOR-ONE

Under the tentative deal, the EU would admit one refugee directly from Turkey for each Syrian it took back from the Greek Aegean islands, and those who attempted the perilous sea route would be returned and go to the back of the queue.

The aim is to persuade Syrians and others that they have better prospects if they stay in Turkey, with increased EU funding for housing, schools and subsistence.

EU officials questioned how the one-for-one scheme would work in practice, with several EU countries objecting to any quota system for resettling refugees.

It might also be overwhelmed if the volume of migrants crossing the Aegean remains high despite increased NATO-backed sea patrols by Greece and Turkey.

Brussels sought to dismiss concerns over the legality of the proposed re-admission arrangements.

“You can be sure that the agreement that will come at the end of it will comply with both European and international law,” Commission spokesman Alexander Winterstein told a news briefing.

Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker cited EU asylum procedure rules to argue that member states were entitled to refuse to consider a claim from a person who arrives from a safe third country.

Some Commission officials have private misgivings both about Turkey’s “safe” status, given its human rights record, and the compatibility of mass returns with asylum seekers’ right to an individual assessment of their claim, an EU source said.

It was unclear whether an eventual deal could be challenged in European or international courts. Any case might take years to reach a ruling, with EU doors closed in the meantime.

Migration experts said refugees would likely try other routes if Turkey’s closure worked. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have begun tightening identity controls and erecting fences on their eastern borders, fearing the Baltic region will become a new entry point for migrants.

“MISERABLE”

EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, speaking in the European Parliament, welcomed the preliminary deal and said: “We need now to ensure a quick implementation of the voluntary humanitarian scheme from Turkey and to implement projects that will further improve the situation of the Syrians in Turkey.”

But many lawmakers criticized the strategy to regain control of the influx, saying the EU must ensure people needing international protection are able to claim asylum.

“In the name of ‘realpolitik’, member states seemed ready to trample on their principles to conclude a shameful bargain with Turkey,” the French Socialist group said.

Critics denounced a cascade of border closures down the main Western Balkan migration route that has left 33,000 people stranded in Greece, causing a humanitarian catastrophe.

Avramopolus responded on Twitter: “It is our responsibility to create more legal pathways for people in need of protection to come to Europe legally and safely.

“Let me assure you that @EU_Commission does not forget and does not forsake its humanitarian duties.”

While Poland and others fretted about where the EU would find the money to double the existing 3 billion euros earmarked for Syrian refugees in Turkey, Cyprus dug in its heels on advancing Turkey’s EU accession process.

Nicosia has blocked the opening of five so-called negotiation chapters – vetting Turkish compliance with EU rules – to demand recognition by Ankara and trade access. It says it will not lift objections until Turkey opens its ports and airports to Cypriot-registered traffic.

Turkey has no diplomatic ties with Cyprus, an ethnically divided island which joined the EU split in 2004 and which is represented by the Greek Cypriot government. Ankara maintains ties with a breakaway Turkish Cypriot state in northern Cyprus.

The two Cypriot communities are negotiating a peace deal to overcome 42 years of division, but until there is movement, Nicosia looks set to keep blocking Ankara’s EU progress.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Lefteris Papadimas in Idomeni, Greece, and Michele Kambas in Nicosia; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Giles Elgood)

‘Game changer’: How the EU may shut Turkish door on migrants

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – A European Union draft deal with Turkey to stop migrants reaching Greece introduces a harder edge of coercion to what critics have derided as a hitherto feeble EU response to a crisis tearing it apart.

Just last week, some saw European Council President Donald Tusk running short on ideas when he urged would-be migrants: “Do not come to Europe.” UKIP, a party campaigning to take Britain out of the EU at a June referendum, said his “weak plea” was “too little too late to stop the vast migrant flow into Europe”.

Yet what Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu called a “game-changing” plan for Turkey to forcibly take back not only economic migrants who make it to Greek islands off its coast but even refugees from Syria, who will then suffer disadvantages, is the strongest move yet to change the calculus of migration.

If the plan is agreed, and if it works, taking to a boat from a Turkish beach at the cost of life savings to a smuggler – and possibly of life itself – would no longer be a ticket to a better life in Germany but a rapid round trip to Turkey. There, those returned would be, in the words of EU officials, “at the back of the line” for legal asylum and resettlement in Europe.

The United Nations refugee agency warned that Europe must not close its door to those in need, as civil war in Syria has left millions homeless and afraid. Human rights groups have been scathing about a Europe preaching democracy but cutting a deal with a Turkish government accused of persecuting opponents.

Many are concerned about a quickfire process of deporting everyone back to Turkey with little regard for individuals.

But 1.2 million people reached the EU last year to claim asylum amid chaotic scenes on beaches and on the long trek north from Greece through the Balkans. It has set EU states at odds, shut long-uncontrolled borders and fueled nationalist sentiment among voters across the bloc. Leaders’ patience is thin.

“We need to break the link between getting in a boat and getting settlement in Europe,” they said after Monday’s summit.

DETERRENCE

An earlier EU plan foresaw deportation back to Turkey reserved for those, such as Pakistanis or North Africans, with little likelihood of winning refugee status in the EU – though in practice making such distinctions has proven problematic.

The new plan would see even Syrians and others with stronger asylum claims being shipped with little ceremony back across straits, now being demonstratively patrolled by NATO warships.

To force back crowds that last year numbered up to 20,000 a day seems impracticable. But EU officials said the key was to dissuade people from traveling in the first place.

For every Syrian sent back from a Greek island in future, another Syrian would be entitled to a legal, safe trip to Europe. That could be a rather small number if deterrence works, so EU leaders agreed to consider also resettling larger numbers.

For Europeans, the deal could help end a crisis that has jeopardized their cherished Schengen passport-free zone.

There are clear gains for Greece, where Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has warned of becoming a “warehouse of souls” as more than 30,000 migrants have become stranded there since its northern neighbors began closing their borders. The downside could be ugly scenes on the islands off Turkey.

For German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who worked closely on the deal with Davutoglu before the summit, a dramatic sign of an imminent end to the crisis could be a boost in regional elections on Sunday that will, in part, pass judgment on her decision last summer to open Germany’s doors to Syrians.

“DIRTY DEAL”

Turkey is seeking in return some 6 billion euros ($6.6 billion) to help improve the lives of refugees over the next three years – twice as much as a two-year deal with the EU struck in November, as well as the opening of new “chapters” in its long-stalled negotiation to join the European Union.

Also important for Turkish public opinion is a request to bring forward by four months to June a plan to make it easier for Turks to travel without visas to Europe’s Schengen zone.

Several European governments have strong reservations about the Turkish proposals. Cyprus is wary about lifting its veto on parts of the accession process as long as Ankara does not end a refusal to recognize or trade with Cyprus, diplomats said.

It is also concerned not to disrupt talks that have brought the prospect of ending the four-decade division of the island.

France, sceptical of Turkey ever joining the EU, is resistant to a rapid easing of visa requirements for Turkey. President Francois Hollande said it would still have to meet 72 criteria – among them modernizing Turkish identity documents.

Britain, too, where Prime Minister David Cameron is campaigning to persuade voters to back continued EU membership on June 23, is wary of newspaper headlines suggesting 75 million Turks may soon be traveling more easily around Europe, even if Britain is outside the Schengen visa area they could access.

And central and eastern European states, long opposed to EU efforts to force them to take in a share of refugees, are concerned about elements of the deal that could see more calls for asylum-seekers to be resettled around the bloc.

However, the lure of an end to the crisis – at least inside Europe – may prove a compelling argument despite the critics.

John O’Brennan, Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at Maynooth University in Ireland, tweeted: “EU norms of pluralism are being completely eviscerated. By the European Union itself. Shame on this dirty deal with Turkey.”

Summit chair Tusk, a former Polish premier, insisted the EU was not going soft on defending human rights in Turkey. But he stressed the benefits of the plan to crack down on travelers, saying: “The days of irregular migration to Europe are over.”

(Editing by Robert Birsel)

EU welcomes bold Turkey plan to stop migrants, defers decision

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union leaders welcomed Turkey’s offer on Monday to take back all migrants who cross into Europe from its soil and agreed in principle to Ankara’s demands for more money, faster EU membership talks and quicker visa-free travel in return.

However, key details remained to be worked out and the 28 leaders ordered more work by officials with a view to reaching an ambitious package deal with Turkey at their next scheduled summit, on March 17-18.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron among others hailed the surprise Turkish proposal at an emergency summit in Brussels as a potential breakthrough in Europe’s politically toxic migration crisis.

More than a million people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond have flooded into the EU since early 2015, most making the perilous sea crossing from Turkey to Greece, then heading north through the Balkans to Germany.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told EU leaders that Ankara was willing to take back all migrants who enter Europe from Turkey in future, including Syrian refugees, as well as those intercepted in its territorial waters.

“With this game-changing position in fact our objective is to discourage illegal migration, to prevent human smugglers, to help people who want to come to Europe through encouraging legal migration in a disciplined and regular manner,” he told a news conference after the summit.

In exchange for stopping the influx, he demanded doubling EU funding through 2018 to help Syrian refugees stay in Turkey and a commitment to take in one Syrian refugee directly from Turkey for each one returned from Greece’s Aegean islands, according to a document seen by Reuters.

He also asked to bring forward EU visa liberalization for Turks to June from end-2016 and to open five more negotiating chapters in Turkey’s long-stalled EU accession process.

The EU leaders agreed to the earlier target date for visa-free travel provided Ankara meets all the conditions including changing its visa policy towards Islamic states and introducing harder-to-fake biometric passports.

They left open how much additional aid they would provide for refugees in Turkey and made only a vague reference to preparing for a decision on opening more areas of membership talks – a particularly sensitive issue for Cyprus.

European Council President Donald Tusk, who chaired the summit, said the outcome would show migrants that there was no longer a path into Europe for people seeking a better life.

“The days of irregular migration to Europe are over,” he told a joint news conference with Davutoglu.

Merkel, who requested the special summit to show results before regional elections in Germany next Sunday, said: “The Turkish proposal is a breakthrough, if it is implemented, to break the chain from getting into a boat to settling in Europe.”

Desperate to end the influx of Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans and others, EU leaders brushed off warnings from the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees that the EU should not shut its doors and should be willing to take in hundreds of thousands more refugees from Turkey.

Davutoglu said the summit showed how indispensable Turkey was for Europe, and Europe for Turkey.

At a preparatory meeting with Merkel and Rutte on Sunday night, he demanded double the 3 billion euros ($3.29 billion) earmarked so far to support Syrian refugees in Turkey.

Diplomats said Merkel and Rutte pressed hard for a deal on the Turkish plan but met resistance from central European states opposed to taking refugee quotas, as well as from Greece and Cyprus which have conditions for the Turkish accession talks.

Three days after the Turkish government seized the best-selling opposition newspaper Zaman, the leaders said they had discussed the situation of the media in Turkey with Davutoglu.

Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said he had insisted on a reference to media freedom in the final statement.

USE FORCE?

Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, one of several central European leaders who has resisted pressure to accept a quota of refugees, said the Turkish proposal, if honored and implemented, would be a big step toward solving the migrant crisis.

The EU leaders pledged to help Greece cope with a backlog of migrants stranded on its soil and welcomed NATO naval back-up in the Aegean Sea to help stop people smugglers.

Merkel refused to endorse border closures by Austria and Balkan neighbors that have stranded over 30,000 migrants in Greece, but the statement noted: “Irregular flows of migrants along the Western Balkans route have now come to an end.”

The German leader, facing a possible political backlash in three regional polls over her welcoming of the refugees, said the question of Turkish EU membership was “not on the agenda today” but strategic cooperation with Ankara was in Europe’s vital geopolitical interests.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said the bloc must speed up the process of relocating asylum seekers from Greece to other EU countries as promised last September. EU states have so far taken in only a few hundred of a promised 160,000 people and central European countries have rejected the whole principle.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance had begun patrols in the Aegean to support efforts to locate migrant boats, overcoming territorial sensitivities in Greece and Turkey to patrol in the waters of both NATO states.

“NATO is starting activities in territorial waters today,” he told a joint news conference in Brussels with Davutoglu.

“We are expanding our cooperation with the EU’s border agency, Frontex, and we are expanding the number of ships in our deployment,” he said, adding that France and Britain had agreed to send ships to the Aegean.

Germany is leading the NATO mission that was agreed on Feb. 11, which also includes ships from Canada, Turkey and Greece. Until now, ships had been in international waters.

Britain’s Cameron said he was sending a naval force to the Aegean to join the NATO force even though Britain is outside the Schengen zone of passport-free travel and has refused to take any share of the migrants from Europe.

While Cameron stressed Britain would take no part in any common EU asylum policy, further migrant chaos could damage his efforts to win a June referendum and keep Britain in the EU.

($1 = 0.9122 euros)

(Additional reporting by Francesco Guarascio, Robert-Jan Bartunek, Renee Maltezou, Philip Blenkinsop, Jan Strupczewski, Alissa de Carbonnel, Paul Taylor, Alastair Macdonald and Robin Emmott in Brussels; Writing by Alastair Macdonald and Paul Taylor; Editing by Sandra Maler)

EU courts Turkey, outlines plan to save open borders

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union officials voiced guarded optimism on Friday that Turkey was starting to cooperate to stem the flow of migrants to Europe as Brussels outlined a timetable for restoring open borders across the continent by the end of the year.

European Council President Donald Tusk, who will chair an emergency EU summit with Turkey on Monday, said after talks in Ankara he saw first signs that EU states were overcoming their differences to tackle the year-old crisis.

He also said Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu had told him Turkey was ready to take back all migrants apprehended in Turkish waters. The EU is demanding that Ankara crack down on people smuggling and take back all illegal migrants from its shores who do not qualify for asylum in the 28-nation EU.

“For the first time since the beginning of the migration crisis, I can see a European consensus emerging,” Tusk said in a summit invitation letter to leaders. “It is a consensus around a comprehensive strategy that, if loyally implemented, can help stem the flows and tackle the crisis.”

The EU is trying to close its porous external borders and change the calculus of people fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and beyond, offering them help if they stay put.

While Tusk was holding talks with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, the European Commission announced the first payouts from a 3 billion euro ($3.3 billion) fund to help Ankara keep some 2.5 million Syrian refugees on Turkish soil.

It also said Turkey was making progress towards achieving eagerly sought visa liberalization for its citizens in the EU.

EU envoy to Turkey Hansjorg Haber told reporters in Istanbul that 400 million euros had been disbursed on humanitarian aid and schooling for migrants.

Meeting in Paris, the leaders of Germany and France agreed that refugees fleeing war in Syria should stay in the region and said their common objective was to put Europe’s frayed Schengen passport-free travel agreement back into operation.

“Our efforts are not done yet,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told a joint news conference with President Francois Hollande. “I understand that Turkey also expects Europe to deliver.”

Merkel pressed for Monday’s summit with Davutoglu in an effort to demonstrate results before three regional elections in Germany on March 13 in which her conservatives face losses to the anti-migration Alternative for Germany party.

STAMPEDE

Tusk said Monday’s summit would confirm the EU had closed the so-called Western Balkans route from Greece to northern Europe, which has been the main entry point for migrants.

“The number of illegal entries from Turkey to Greece remains far too high,” he said after his talks with Davutoglu. Some 30,000 migrants are bottled up in Greece and more are arriving at a rate of 2,000 to 3,000 a day despite still wintry seas.

“We both believe that we can reduce the flow through the large-scale and rapid return from Greece of all migrants not in need of international protection,” Tusk said.

On a visit to Athens, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said Ankara was seeing a significant decrease in the number of refugees arriving at its borders due to its changing visa regime.

In Brussels, the Commission presented a step-by-step plan to implement agreed or already-proposed measures – including a new EU border and coast guard – to curb the influx after more than a million people arrived in an uncontrolled stampede in 2015.

“We cannot have free movement internally if we cannot manage our external borders effectively,” Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told a news conference.

In a pre-summit report to EU leaders, the Commission estimated that a complete collapse of passport-free travel in the 26-nation Schengen zone could cost the European economy up to 18 billion euros ($19.8 billion) a year. Much of the cost would fall on cross-border commuters, transport and tourism.

But investment bank JPMorgan Chase said the short-term impact of more probable selective border controls was likely to be “small in business cycle terms”.

Eight Schengen countries have temporary, emergency border controls in place now to control the flow of migrants, putting in jeopardy one of Europe’s most prized achievements.

More than 1.2 million people submitted asylum requests in the 28-nation EU last year, including 363,000 Syrians and 178,000 Afghans, the EU statistics agency Eurostat said.

Some 442,000 applications were submitted in Germany, the top destination for refugees and migrants, followed by 174,000 in Hungary, which erected barbed-wire fences and used security forces to shut people out, and 156,000 in Sweden, it said.

Sweden, long regarded as the most generous EU state towards refugees, said it would scrap payments of daily allowances to migrants whose asylum applications had been rejected in its latest attempt to curtail the influx.

Fewer than one-fifth of Germans believe the EU will agree on a common approach to the refugee crisis, according to a poll published by the daily Die Welt, and some 48 percent want Berlin to improve protection of Germany’s national borders.

A clear majority — 56 percent — said Germany should cut its EU contributions if Monday’s refugee summit fails.

While Brussels and Berlin are pushing for a European response to the crisis, more and more EU states are skeptical it could work and are resorting to unilateral steps.

“The Commission would never announce that Schengen is over,” said one Brussels-based diplomat from an EU country.

“That would be a major political blow to them, the first real setback in the whole process of European integration. It would be like the pope announcing there is no God.”

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald in Brussels, Paul Carrel in Berlin, Andrew Callus in Paris, Nick Tattersall and Humeyra Pamuk in Istanbul; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Gareth Jones)

EU fate at stake on muddy Greek border as migrants trapped

IDOMENI, Greece (Reuters) – In muddy fields straddling the border with Macedonia, a transit camp hosting up to 12,000 homeless migrants in filthy conditions is the most dramatic sign of a new crisis tearing at Greece’s frayed ties with Europe and threatening its stability.

For the last year, Greece has largely waved through nearly a million migrants who crossed the Aegean Sea from Turkey on their way to wealthier northern Europe.

Now, on top of a searing economic crisis that took it close to ejection from the euro zone a year ago, the European Union’s most enfeebled state is suddenly being turned into what Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras calls a “warehouse of souls”.

At least 30,000 people fleeing conflict or poverty in the Middle East and beyond are bottled up in Greece after Western Balkan states effectively closed their borders. Up to 3,000 more are crossing the Aegean every day despite rough winter seas.

“This is an explosive mix which could blow up at any time. You cannot, however, know when,” said Costas Panagopoulos, head of ALCO opinion pollsters.

Men, women and children from Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq are packed like sardines in a disused former airport terminal in Athens, crammed into an indoor stadium or sleeping rough in a central square, where two tried to hang themselves last week.

The influx is severely straining the resources of a country barely able to look after its own people after a six-year recession – the worst since World War Two – that has shrunk the economy by a quarter and driven unemployment above 25 percent.

After years of austerity imposed by international lenders, who are now demanding deeper cuts in old-age pensions, ordinary Greeks say they feel abandoned by the European Union.

A staggering 92 percent of respondents in a Public Issue poll published by To Vima newspaper last Sunday said they felt the EU had left Greece to fend for itself.

The poll was taken before the European Commission announced 300 million euros in emergency aid this year to support relief organizations providing food, shelter and care for the migrants. But such promises do little to soften public anger.

“I want to spit at them,” said 40-year-old Maria Constantinidou, who is unemployed. “Those European leaders .. should each take 10 migrants home, feed them, look after them and then see how difficult things are.”

While the EU and Turkey will struggle to find a consensus at an emergency summit on Monday on how to stem the influx of migrants, Greece looks set to become Europe’s waiting room for months to come.

At Idomeni, a small border town in northern Greece, men from Syria held screaming babies close to a razor wire fence on Thursday, imploring Macedonian police they be allowed to cross.

Greece says it is a victim of geography; some EU partners say Greek fecklessness forced them to reimpose border controls, putting the future of a border-free Europe at stake.

“Its like watching a slow moving train wreck,” said Theodore Couloumbis, a veteran professor of international relations who is an expert on the Balkans and Greek foreign policy.

Yanis Varoufakis, a former finance minister who took Greece to the brink of a euro zone exit last year by battling creditors over bailout terms, says the crisis was symptomatic of a moral, political and economic trauma in the EU.

“Greece has been, as it always is, the weakest link in the organism and shows the biggest symptoms of disease,” he told Reuters.

CRISIS IN A CRISIS

The initial response from the public has been an outpouring of generosity towards stranded migrants, although a neo-fascist party, Golden Dawn, which advocates forcing immigrants out of Greece, has captured 7 percent of the vote in recent elections.

The migrant crisis threatens a nascent economic turnaround forecast in Greece from the second half of 2016, after six years of deep recession. Business leaders and the central bank have warned that the uncertainty could be a drag on the economy.

The main uncertainty factor is stalled negotiations between Athens and its creditors – the euro zone, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

A first review of economic reforms under the bailout plan agreed last August, which Greece wants concluded fast to move on to debt relief talks, has been held up by disagreement among the lenders over how much more Athens needs to save in public spending, notably on pensions.

Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos insisted on Thursday that cuts in basic pensions were a “red line” for the government.

Publicly at least, nobody is making linkages between the refugee crisis and the bailout review or discussing trade-offs between the two, which are being handled separately.

“It is certainly not my intention to say, ‘look, I have a refugee crisis and that gives me leeway to operate beyond the framework of the (bailout) agreement’,” Tsipras said in a television interview this week. “The agreement will be kept.”

One of the most hawkish creditors, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte told Reuters that while the EU should give Greece humanitarian aid, the bailout program must be kept separate.

Greece is funded till July when it faces bond repayments to the ECB, so there is no immediate financial pressure.

But a worsening migrant flow could further complicate Tsipras’ attempts to sell painful bailout reforms to a public which already feels maltreated by its EU partners.

And some policymakers in Brussels, Paris and even Berlin acknowledge that having averted a Greek exit from the euro last year, this would be the worst time for another Greek financial meltdown or political upheaval.

Greeks don’t need much prompting to take to the streets. Mass protests are a regular feature in a volatile country of 11 million where pensions have been cut 11 times since 2010.

Pollster Panagopoulos said he doubted the dual crisis would topple the government, but Tsipras might call another election — after two general elections and a referendum last year — if he felt in a deadlock.

CRISIS HOVERS OVER BREXIT

In mid-February, Greece briefly threatened not to sign off on final agreements at an EU summit on amending Britain’s membership terms unless Athens won assurances that EU states would not shut their borders. They did so anyway.

Now Tsipras has hinted at using the veto threat again to ensure his country does not become a holding pen for migrants.

“What I am seeking is the best possible outcome for Greece. Even if it means, to achieve that, using all tools provided for under (EU) conventions,” the leftist prime minister said in a television interview this week when asked if he could veto a deal between the EU and Turkey at a summit next week.

How Greece and the migrant crisis are handled may resonate at the other end of the continent in Britain, where voters will decide in a June 23 referendum whether to stay in the bloc.

James Ker-Lindsay, a Balkans expert at the London School of Economics, said leftist academics in Britain – a small but influential group typically supportive of the EU – were so dismayed by Brussels’ treatment of Greece in 2015 that it would not take much to alienate them completely.

“If it looks like a double dose harsh treatment, the euroscepticism which is coming in very strong from right-wing parties across the EU could start being repeated on the left, but for a very different reason,” Ker-Lindsay said.

(Writing by Michele Kambas; Editing by Paul Taylor and Mark John)

EU Council president urges migrants to stop coming to Europe

ATHENS (Reuters) – EU Council President Donald Tusk told illegal economic migrants on Thursday not to risk their lives or money to make a perilous trip to Europe “for nothing” but said unilateral actions by European Union states to deal with the crisis must stop.

Tusk was on a trip through Balkan states to try to drum up support for cohesion on how to deal with hundreds of thousands of migrants – a crisis that threatens to tear the bloc apart – before an EU summit on Monday.

From Greece, which has been a primary gateway of migrants flooding into Europe for more than a year, Tusk said anyone who was not a refugee should stay away.

“I want to appeal to all potential illegal economic migrants wherever you are from: Do not come to Europe. Do not believe the smugglers. Do not risk your lives and your money. It is all for nothing,” Tusk said.

Up to 30,000 refugees and migrants have been stranded in Greece from progressive border closures further up the “Balkan corridor”, the route taken to get into wealthier central and northern Europe.

“At Monday’s summit, Greece will demand that burden sharing be equitable among all countries in the bloc, and sanctions for those that do not,” Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said after meeting Tusk.

“We ask that unilateral actions stop in Europe,” said Tspiras in a view echoed by Tusk.

EU officials have told Reuters that European governments, and particularly Germany, are looking to Turkey to reduce the number of migrant arrivals in Greece to below 1,000 a day at most as an initial condition for discussing taking some Syrian refugees directly from Turkey.

Tsipras said Greece would continue to do whatever it could to ensure no migrant or refugee was left helpless. But he added Greece could not bear the burden by itself.

“We will not allow Greece or any other country to be turned into a warehouse of souls,” Tsipras said. “We are at a crucial moment for the future of Europe.”

Greece would make every effort to apply international treaties. Speaking of the masses of people reaching Greek shores on small inflatable dinghies from Turkey, Tsipras said: “We will not push back people in the sea, risking the lives of children.”

Officials said Tusk would be stressing in Athens and Ankara on Thursday that the goal was to eliminate entirely the transit of migrants from Turkey to Greece and that Europeans believed Turkey should be able to bring the numbers down to the “low triple digits” very soon.

“If there were to be a target figure, it would be zero,” one EU official said, noting that 1,000 people a day would mean an unsustainable 350,000 people a year arriving in Greece.

(Editing by Richard Balmforth)

EU launches emergency refugee aid scheme for Greece

By Gabriela Baczynska and Francesco Guarascio

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union, faced with a burgeoning refugee crisis in Greece, launched a new aid program on Wednesday worth an initial 700 million euros that mirrors the kind of disaster relief it offers developing nations.

As European states have tightened borders following the arrival of more than a million migrants by sea last year and the Athens government has appealed for help to house and care for tens of thousands still arriving and now stranded in Greece.

The European Commission’s proposal will, if approved, switch 300 million euros ($325 million) this year from its 155-billion euro annual budget to the new emergency assistance scheme and 200 million euros both next year and in 2018.

Officials stress that the program will not divert funds from the EU’s 1.1-billion annual budget devoted to helping the world’s poorest. They note that relieving the suffering of refugees closer to their homes is a key part of the 28-nation bloc’s strategy to discourage people from making dangerous journeys to Europe.

More than 400 people have died or gone missing in the Mediterranean this year as they tried to reach Europe, most of them on the short but perilous crossing from Turkey to Greece.

Turkey is at the heart of the EU’s efforts to slow the influx of refugees and migrants and the bloc wants Ankara to ensure that daily arrivals fall below 1,000 from 2,000-3,000 at present.

Two officials told Reuters that Germany, the principal destination for those arriving in Europe, is looking for flows to be “in the realm of three digits, not four” per day and, should that happen, Berlin would start taking refugees directly from Turkey for resettlement – an attempt to promote legal migration rather than continuing the chaotic influx of 2015.

The Commission also said on Wednesday that 308 irregular migrants who had no case for asylum in Europe were being returned to Turkey from Greece, a sharp increase on recent numbers going back to Turkey.

The EU money, to be spent in conjunction with the United Nations and private charities working in Greece and other EU states, is intended to fund purchases of shelter, food, medical aid and other basic services.

Greece, which now houses about 25,000 refugees and migrants, has hitherto benefited from EU funding and assistance under other programs to bolster its border and security systems and coordinate donations of aid from fellow EU members, though Athens has complained that offers have been inadequate.

“The number of refugees continues to rise, so do their humanitarian needs. All of this is happening inside Europe,” Humanitarian Aid Commissioner Christos Stylianides said.

At a single border point, the Idomeni crossing between Greece and Macedonia, between 12,000 and 15,000 stranded people were in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, he said.

“OVERWHELMED”

Officials in Brussels said the aim is to have the scheme operational on the ground “within weeks rather than months”.

The new program, to be a permanent feature of the EU budget, is intended for use by any EU state that is “overwhelmed” and cannot cope with a wide range of emergencies, including accidents, militant attacks and epidemics. It will need approval by the European Parliament and member states.

Greece, the main gateway to Europe, would initially be the main beneficiary of the emergency scheme for “tackling wide-ranging humanitarian crises within the EU”. The money would also be available to other EU countries along the Balkans migration route — the main track used by refugees and migrants.

Greece, its economy blighted by the euro zone debt crisis, has asked for 480 million euros to help it cope with 100,000 migrants. EU officials said on Wednesday they were still looking at the request.

More than a million people reached Europe last year and some 133,000 arrived on the continent so far in 2016 in what has grown to be a major crisis for the bloc, that now also risks turning into a humanitarian disaster.

(Additional reporting by Alastair Macdonald and Robin Emmott; Editing by Dominic Evans)

Europe on cusp of self-induced humanitarian crisis, UNHCR says

GENEVA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The build-up of thousands of migrants and refugees on Greece’s northern borders is fast turning into a humanitarian disaster, the United Nations said on Tuesday as the European Union prepared to offer more financial aid.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said clashes at Greece’s border with Macedonia on Monday – when migrants battered down a gate and were tear-gassed – simply underlined the urgency with which the EU needed to act on the crisis.

But Austria – which last month limited the number of migrants it lets through to 3,200 a day – stuck to its position that it did not want to become an overcrowded waiting room for thousands wanting to make it further north.

Croatia, which is also on what is now the well-trodden migrants route northwards from Greece, said it might deploy its armed forces to help police control flows.

But near Idomeni, on the Greek-Macedonian border itself, a tent city mushroomed, prompting some despair among those trapped there. “Macedonian police put us here, the Greeks don’t want us back,” Yase Qued, a 16-year-old from Afghanistan, told Reuters.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) called for better planning and accommodation for at least 24,000 it said were stuck in Greece, including 8,500 at Idomeni.

“Europe is on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis,” U.N. refugee agency spokesman Adrian Edwards told a news briefing.

“The crowded conditions are leading to shortages of food, shelter, water and sanitation. As we all saw yesterday, tensions have been building, fuelling violence and playing into the hands of people smugglers,” he said.

Migrants have become stranded in Greece since Austria and other countries along the Balkans migration corridor imposed restrictions on their borders, limiting the numbers able to cross.

Police chiefs from Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia, meeting in Belgrade, agreed to improve the system of joint registration of refugees to unblock gridlocks in Greece.

The burgeoning crisis adds to last year’s chaos when more than a million migrants and refugees arrived in the EU, many fleeing the war in Syria and walking from Turkey northwards.

Some 130,000 have reached the continent so far in 2016.

CRISIS AID

The European Commission, the EU executive, said it would float a plan on Wednesday to offer emergency financial aid for humanitarian crises inside the 28-nation bloc – comparable with operations it has launched elsewhere in the world.

Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker spoke to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Monday and European Council President Donald Tusk was on a visit to Austria, Slovenia, Croatia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey.

Tusk’s tour comes ahead of a special European Union summit on the crisis next Monday. Germany’s Merkel said television pictures of migrants desperate to make their way into western Europe via the Balkans drove home the urgency of the summit.

“The pictures show us clearly every day that there is a need for talks,” she said after meeting Croatian Prime Minister Tihomir Oreskovic in Berlin.

“We also naturally need to deal with the very difficult situation in Greece and see how we can fulfill what the (European) Commission demanded from us, namely to end the politics of waving people through and to return to the Schengen system as soon as possible and to the greatest possible extent.”

The difficulty of reaching agreement on an issue which goes to the heart of public fears for security and safety in many countries was underlined by Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann, who honed in on comments from German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere that suggested he thought Austria might wave through too many migrants.

“What is not acceptable is to say that they should definitely come and then the interior minister says he is against waving people through (to Germany),” Faymann told a news conference after a weekly cabinet meeting.

“Then how should they go to Germany?”

The UNHCR, meanwhile, urged all EU member states to reinforce their capacity to register and process asylum seekers through their national procedures as well as through an EU relocation scheme.

“Greece cannot manage this situation alone,” Edwards said.

Despite commitments to relocate 66,400 refugees from Greece, EU member states have so far pledged just 1,539 spaces and only 325 people actually have been relocated, he added.

(Additional reporting by Lefteris Papadimas in Idomeni, Francois Murphy in Vienna, Aleksandar Vasovic in Belgrade, Paul Carrel in Berlin; Writing by Jeremy Gaunt; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Clashes break out as France begins clearing Calais migrant camp

CALAIS, France (Reuters) – Clashes with police broke out on Monday as work got underway to clear part of the shanty town outside Calais in northern France where migrants are trying to reach Britain.

Police fired tear gas around midday, about 150-200 migrants and activists threw stones, and three makeshift shelters were set ablaze, according to a Reuters photographer at the site.

Earlier, one person was arrested for trying to stop a group of about 20 workers under heavy police protection from clearing the site, where about 3,000 people are staying.

“The migrants are just going to run and hide in the woods and the police are going to have to go after them,” said activist Francois Guennoc of the Auberge des Migrants migrant support group.

Regional Prefect Fabienne Buccio had said the police presence was needed because “extremists” could try to intimidate migrants into turning down housing offers or buses to reception centers.

Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said last week that authorities would work with humanitarian organizations to relocate the migrants to a nearby park of converted shipping containers or other reception centers around France.

On Thursday, a judge upheld a government order to evict migrants living in the southern part of the camp, although a few makeshift buildings of social importance such as a school and a theater are to remain untouched.

Thousands of migrants fleeing war and poverty, from Afghanistan to Syria, have converged on the northern port over the past year.

Many attempt to climb illegally onto trains using the Channel Tunnel or into lorries heading to Britain where they hope to settle. Their presence has led to tension with some of the local population and to a permanent police deployment.

Earlier on Monday at another European migrant crisis flashpoint, Macedonian police also fired tear gas to disperse hundreds who stormed the border from Greece. The migrants had torn down a gate as frustrations boiled over at restrictions imposed on people moving through the Balkans.

(Reporting by Pascal Rossignol and Pierre Savary; Writing by Leigh Thomas; Editing by Ralph Boulton)