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TEHRAN, Feb 20 - The European Union faces "no burning crisis" right now over migrant arrivals, but more people from Africa are trying to enter Europe through Spain from Morocco, the head of the EU's border and coast guard agency said Wednesday.
TEHRAN, Young Journalists Club (YJC) - The EU has been plunged into a severe political crisis due to differences over how to handle the arrival of people seeking sanctuary or jobs. It was sparked by the entry of well over a million migrants — many fleeing conflict in Syria and Iraq — in 2015. Greece and Italy were overwhelmed by the large number of arrivals, while their EU partners balked at sharing the load.
"Right now, we are not in the middle of a migration crisis at the external borders but, of course, we do see that there is still a pressure," Frontex chief Fabrice Leggeri told reporters in Brussels.
Leggeri said that unauthorized migrant crossings of the Mediterranean Sea dropped by more than a quarter last year, to 150,000 arrivals. The number of people leaving Libya and Tunisia on the central Mediterranean route for Europe plunged by 80 percent in 2018, to around 23,500 arrivals, Leggeri said.
To ensure that nations can cope with any repeat of 2015, the EU's executive body, the European Commission, has encouraged the 28 member countries to adopt permanent refugee quotas, but the move has been rejected, notably in Eastern Europe.
The EU faces relatively few migrant arrivals compared to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
But the focus on migration — seen as a sure-fire vote winner for populists in the east — is increasing in the run up to EU-wide elections on May 23-26. The Hungarian government — which erected razor-wire fences in 2015 to keep migrants out — is funding election campaign posters that slam the Commission and "Brussels' plans to encourage immigration." The Commission rejects the campaign as "ludicrous" and "fake news."
Source: AP
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