EU migration policy: Eastern European leaders get tough on new plans

Hungary's Viktor Orban, Poland's Mateusz Morawiecki and the Czech Republic's Andrej Babis shot down the EU's p

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Hungary's Viktor Orban, Poland's Mateusz Morawiecki and the Czech Republic's Andrej Babis shot down the EU's planned migration reform ahead of scheduled talks. The Visegrad group rejects asylum seeker quotas.

The prime ministers of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic expressed their unanimous disapproval of the EU Commission's migration plan after meeting with EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen on Thursday.

The meeting with three of the heads of the so-called Visegrad group, which also includes Slovakia, took place as EU members states prepare to discuss a common migration policy next week.

All three conveyed their skepticism of the planned reforms in a joint press conference.

Read more: Opinion: EU migration pact is victory for the nationalists

The proposal is 'unacceptable'

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban rejected the idea that the Commission's plan represented a breakthrough for the European bloc's joint policy.

"The breakthrough will come when the Hungarian proposal is accepted that says that nobody can enter the territory of the European Union until one of the member states closes their asylum procedure," he said.

  • Portrait of a young girl with a pink head scarf - part of the book 'I'm Alive' (Dominic Nahr/Save The Children)

    A century of war survivors in photos

    Amal*, Lebanon

    Amal (*not her real name), left the besieged city of Homs in Syria at the age of seven. Now living in a refugee camp in Lebanon, the 11-year-old is a rather sad and quiet girl. Yet she radiated unexpected confidence in this portrait by photographer Dominic Nahr. He was so impressed by her inner strength in this shot that it inspired an entire photo series on conflict survivors.

  • Portrait of a senior lady, Evelyne Brix, in her living room. part of the book 'I'm Alive' (Dominic Nahr/Save The Children)

    A century of war survivors in photos

    Evelyne Brix, Germany

    The book project, titled "I am alive," marks the 100th anniversary of the organization Save the Children, which was created in the UK in 1919 to assist children affected by war. It features portraits of people who survived a conflict of every decade of the past century. Pictured here is Evelyne Brix, who still remembers the meals provided by the organization in 1946 in Berlin. She was then 14.

  • Vanessa Ntakirutimana from Rwanda carrying her one and a half year old son on her back (Dominic Nahr/Save The Children)

    A century of war survivors in photos

    Vanessa Ntakirutimana, Rwanda

    Vanessa was five years old when the Tutsis killed around one million people within 100 days in Rwanda in 1994. She managed to flee with her mother and her two siblings, but they lost each other during the escape. Despite a search launched by Save the Children, her parents were never found. The scars of this trauma could still be felt in her gaze, said photographer Dominic Nahr.

  • Two photos: On the left side a polaroid of children, and on the right, a group of laughing teenagers, including a young man wearing a red T-shirt spreading his arms out (Save the Children/Kerber Verlag)

    A century of war survivors in photos

    Jose David Rios*, Columbia

    Along with portraits by Dominic Nahr, the book combines photos of the time of the conflicts. Old polaroids often helped to find people who were part of Save the Children programs as children. Portrayed right is Colombian Jose David Rios (name changed to protect his identity), 17, with his friends. At the age of 9, he was injured in a crossfire between the FARC rebel army and government troops.

  • Two photos from the book 'I'm alive': on the left a black page with a series of negatives of a person climbing on a tank; on the rights the same tank in color with three people in the foreground (Save the Children/Kerber Verlag)

    A century of war survivors in photos

    Afghanistan

    Along with the portraits of the 11 conflict survivors, Dominic Nahr also photographed various landscapes and everyday life situations. Negatives of selected series of photos alternate with color shots to evoke the idea that the conflict took place in the past, but nevertheless still leaves its mark today.

  • A senior man walking the forest looks up at the sky (Dominic Nahr/Save The Children)

    A century of war survivors in photos

    Erich Karl, Germany

    The greatest challenge to complete the series was to find a survivor of World War I, since that's when Save the Children was initially created to help the children who were starving in Germany and Austria-Hungary at the time. And an actual eyewitness was found: Erich Karl, who is turning 107 this year, still remembers the hot chocolate he received from a feeding program in 1919.

  • A sleeping baby with arms stretched out, on red and green blankets (Dominic Nahr/Save The Children)

    A century of war survivors in photos

    Rajiya*, Bangladesh

    The book "I am Alive - How Children Survived a Century of Wars" presents the stories of 10 individuals who survived the wars of the past century, plus one "baby of hope": Rajiya is one of the 119 babies who were born between July 2018 and May 2019 in a Save the Children refugee camp for the Rohingya who fled Myanmar. Still today, an estimated 415 million children are growing up in war zones.

    Author: Elizabeth Grenier


Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis told reporters that the EU should be stopping migrants at the border and sending them home.

"We have to change the system of grants and the quota system, it's unacceptable for us. That's why we should keep negotiating... the strategy should look like this - the people coming from these countries, they should be stopped and turned back to their countries and be given help there," Babis said.

In turn, Poland's Mateusz Morawiecki said the Visegrad group would stick by its demands for "the most rigorous and effective border control policies".

"We want to prevent problems at source rather than have to then deal with the huge and controversial proposals we have in 2016, 17, 18 on migrant policy," he said.

What is the Commission's proposal?

On Wednesday the European Commission proposed a "compulsory solidarity mechanism" consisting of quotas for each country to take in refugees, as well as a grant of €10,000 ($11,750) per adult taken in, funded from the EU's budget.

Read more:Poll says anti-immigrant attitudes are on the rise across the globe

It also proposed tougher checks on the bloc's borders, which would include screening for arrivals who are unwell or those considered a security risk.

What might happen next?

The plan has already received heavy criticism from some of the countries in the EU. This could spell trouble for the next week's talks as unanimous approval is required to push through big changes in the bloc's migration policy.

Read more: Is the EU's refugee policy doomed to division?

If successful, the proposal could come into effect by 2023. However, previous attempts to introduce reforms similar to this one failed to gain enough support.

The outright rejection of the proposal by the eastern European states dealt a blow to the deal before negotiations even started in proper.

The plan was also attacked by migrant rights activists who were disappointed by the reforms not going far enough and for the Commission giving in to right-wing populism and xenophobia.

ab/msh (AFP, Reuters)



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