Middle East crisis: EU ministers approve plan to share 120,000 refugees

Middle East crisis: EU ministers approve plan to share 120,000 refugees

BRUSSELS/PARIS — Ministers from European Union nations approved a plan Tuesday to take in 120,000 refugees fleeing the Middle East, even as the OECD predicted that up to 1 million people may apply for asylum in the EU this year.

     The plan, adopted in a contentious vote, apportions the refugees among the bloc’s member states.

     The time has come to “show we really mean it when we talk about responsibility and solidarity,” Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU commissioner for migration, told reporters prior to the emergency meeting.

     Ministers had been unable to agree on a refugee-sharing plan Sept. 14 amid objections by some central and eastern European members. Faced with a deepening humanitarian crisis, the EU decided to try again. But the approval reached this time did not come by consensus, as ministers from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania voted against the plan.

     The tide of those escaping conflict and poverty continues unabated. Nearly 10,000 refugees entered Austria from Hungary on Monday alone, Austrian police said. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s government took out a newspaper ad Tuesday in Lebanon, a stopping point for EU-bound Syrian refugees, telling would-be comers that his country does not tolerate illegal immigration. The government is taking a hard line against refugees, letting the military use tear gas and other force against them to maintain border control.

     The EU thus stands divided by this humanitarian challenge. Domestic politics and national sentiment make the issue contentious for the EU’s eastern members. Orban, known for heavy-handed political methods, seems to be using the crisis to provoke a fight with Brussels.

     “Immigrants are now not just pounding on our doors, but are breaking them down on top of us,” he told Hungary’s parliament Monday.

     Given such opposition, the outlook for implementing the plan remains unclear. EU leaders will hold an informal emergency summit Wednesday to discuss longer-term actions targeting the root causes of the exodus of people from the Middle East and Africa.

‘Unprecedented’ influx

The EU will face an “unprecedented number of asylum seekers and refugees” this year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development wrote in a report issued Tuesday. Of the 1 million expected to seek asylum or similar status, an estimated 350,000 to 450,000 could see their applications approved, the report said.

     Welcoming and supporting new refugees entail short-term costs but doing so is crucial to their long-term integration into society, the OECD said.

     “The work of the OECD shows that migration, if well managed, can play a positive role in the economy and notably that immigrants tend to pay more in taxes and social security contributions than they receive in individual benefits,” the report said.

     The Syrians now arriving in Europe are better educated and more skilled than migrants from the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, the report said. More than 40% of Syrians in Sweden had completed at least upper secondary education in 2014, compared with 20% of migrants from Afghanistan and 10% of those from Eritrea, according to the report, which says aid with language acquisition, training and other support helps migrants benefit the economy.

     The refugee-producing conflicts and instability in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan and sub-Saharan Africa are likely to persist, the report said.

    “Looking forward, it is unlikely that pressure from sending countries will ease,” the OECD wrote.

Middle East crisis: EU ministers approve plan to share 120,000 refugees