Friday
22nd Jun 2018
EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos says "regional disembarkation schemes" would be set up in countries around the Mediterranean - although none have expressed a desire to participate.
Europe's choice is between unplanned, reactive, fragmented, ineffective migration policy and planned, regulated, documented movements of people, writes International Rescue Committee chief David Miliband.
Non-citizens from Nigeria to Afghanistan get a binding 'vote' on whatever the EU's internal debates submit to them. They will vote with their feet on whether to keep trying their luck when faced with a new system.
The precarious situation the Aquarius and its passengers found themselves is a consequence of EU member states' failure to manage migration in a strategic and coordinated manner, where member states beyond those receiving new arrivals are part of the solution.
Some 300,000 school-age Syrian children in Turkey are not enrolled in classes. Fears they may end up in sweatshops or forced to beg have triggered efforts by the EU, Unicef, and the Turkish government to keep them in school.
Prolonged internal border checks are "unlawful", MEPs are preparing to say on Tuesday, in the EU parliament's first bid to protect free movement in Europe.
German domestic politics has taken over the EU migration agenda, as leaders meet for a mini-summit on Sunday.
Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel and France's president Emmanuel Macron on Tuesday signed a joint declaration that offers concessions by both camps in terms of migration and the setting up of a eurozone budget.
The Hungarian government of Viktor Orban has said it will not wait until Friday, to hear a verdict of European legal experts on human rights, before going ahead with its bill curtailing NGOs who work with migrants.
Draft conclusions of the EU summit seen by this website suggest setting up "regional disembarkation platforms", possibly in countries near Libya, to separate asylum seekers and economic migrants.
Efforts to reform 'Dublin', a regulation that determines who is responsible for asylum applications, remain mired in controversy. But other less contentious reforms that make up EU asylum laws have already reached provisional agreements.
EU states, plus Norway, Switzerland, Iceland and Liechtenstein, registered 728,470 asylum applications last year, a 44 percent drop compared to 2016. Germany had the highest registrations at 222,560, followed by Italy and France.
Matteo Salvini promises to send record numbers of migrants packing. However, that quickly comes up against the cost, logistics, and diplomacy, of how such a threat would be carried out - and the price for the EU as a whole.
Local authorities in Bavaria, southern Germany, could start turning back migrants on Monday in a rebellion that threatens Merkel's authority.
The standoff over the rescue boat, which is now heading to Spain, is part of a wider politically toxic narrative against refugees and migrants and a symptom of EU failures to reform asylum laws.
Winner of 'World's Best Mayor', Mechelen's Bart Somers has invited Hungary's PM to visit. "You know, in the whole of Hungary with 10million inhabitants, they have less Muslims than we have in a small city of 90,000," he told EUobserver.
France has butted heads with Italy's populists on migration, as the EU commission watches from the sidelines.
The Basque government have offered to host some of the refugees rescued by the Aquarius humanitarian ship that will dock in Valencia. "That is the commitment of the Basque country," said it leader Inigo Ukrullu.
People seeking refuge from war and poverty could be corralled into "unattractive" detention centres outside the EU if one European clique gets its way.
The prospect of an EU consensus on asylum reform is dire, but even if leaders agree, their position will differ vastly from European Parliament demands.
Redistribution of migrants remains the worst sticking point as EU ministers discuss the latest attempt to rewrite Europe's 'Dublin' asylum law.
Some 25 percent of Slovenians have voted for the anti-immigrant Slovenia Democratic party headed by Janez Jansa, a former PM who spent six months in jail for corruption.
The British government is abusing EU travel security systems, making and using illegal copies of outdated information, and putting innocent people at risk of being red-flagged.
The European Commission wants to triple the amount of money for migration in the next EU budget. Earlier this week, EU agencies, NGOs, and the mayor of Athens gave their views at a European parliament public hearing.
Most refugee-related services are outsourced to the private sector and NGOs, which are not adequately monitored and evaluated. When governments and EU institutions provide funding for refugee projects, they should scrutinise the NGOs and private players they work with.
Greece and Italy have a duty to better control migration into Europe, said Boyko Borisov, whose country holds the EU presidency.
The closure of the Hungarian border to keep migrants out has pushed some of those who are desperate to leave Kosovo or Albania to find new routes to Western Europe via Romania.
Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker says the EU has almost solved the migration issue - but a large part of this 'solution' has been a deliberate strategy to push the problems out of sight, outsourcing stopping migration to African states.
The European Commission in its new budget wants to almost triple the amount of EU money, to over €34bn, that goes into border management and migration. Part of that sum may go to finance 10,000 border guards for Frontex.
The EU Blue Card scheme aims to attract highly-skilled workers from abroad and address labour shortages. In 2016, the EU Commission proposed a reform. Today, it is being "blocked and outright rejected" by Germany.
As the EU prepares to host another summit in Brussels to address the Syria refugee crisis, it must acknowledge that the trade component of its deal with Jordan has failed in practice.
French lawmakers are cracking down on asylum seekers in a bid to send those rejected back home. Controversial measures they passed over the weekend will now be debated in the French senate in June.
Fundamental freedoms are under attack across the EU but the case of Bulgaria presents unique challenges, and opportunities to learn, for left-wing forces throughout Europe.
