(Politico) - The EU should have a new scheme for resettling migrants, with a target of 50,000 being resettled over the next two years, the European Commission said Wednesday as it set out its plans for migration and asylum policy.
“This is part of the Commission’s efforts to provide viable, safe and legal alternatives for those who risk their lives at the hands of criminal smuggling networks,” the Commission said in statement.
“We need to open real alternatives to taking perilous irregular journeys,” said the European commissioner for migration and home affairs, Dimitris Avramopoulos. “Investing in more legal pathways, both for protection but also for study or work, is therefore essential,” he added.
The resettlement scheme would be voluntary, as opposed to the Commission’s attempt at a refugee relocation scheme, which ended Tuesday. The two-year scheme aimed to take 160,000 refugees who had arrived in Italy and Greece and move them across the bloc. However, the scheme fell well short of expectations. Around 29,000 refugees were relocated and some EU members, notably Hungary and Poland, refused to take part even though participation was supposed to be mandatory.
On Wednesday, the Commission also proposed €500 million in financial support for EU countries in their resettlement efforts and called for an increased focus on resettling migrants from the likes of Libya, Egypt, Niger, Sudan, Chad and Ethiopia.
1 comment:
the same stupid policy ...
Post a Comment