KAPITAN-ANDREEVO, Bulgaria // The European Union launched a joint border guard force on Thursday as it tries to prevent any repeat of last year's uncontrolled influx of refugees that opened up gaping rifts between member states.
Overwhelmed by the arrival of some 1.3 million people in 2015, the EU has increasingly focused on sealing its external borders. The new European Border and Coast Guard Agency (EBCG) is designed to deploy quickly and flexibly to any location on the bloc's frontiers, with a long-term goal of lifting border controls inside the bloc and fully restoring the passport-free Schengen Zone.
"The establishment of the agency is a symbol of the EU, of a Europe that is able to deliver, that is proving its efficiency in addressing the migration and security challenges we are faced with," EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told a ceremony at a Bulgarian border point with Turkey.
He hailed the launch as a "historical day for the European Union".
The creation of the EBCG, which was agreed upon by all 28 member states earlier this year, is a rare show of unity for the EU amid tensions over the refugee crisis.
The force, which will have an annual budget of €320 million (Dh1.3 billion), is due to have 1,000 staff and a reserve pool of 1,500 border guards designated by member states. In the past, however, EU governments have often been slow to provide such reinforcements.
It will also have some 120 officers in Bulgaria, which shares a land border with Turkey and whose prime minister Boiko Borisov has previously criticised the EU's response to the refugee crisis as too soft. "This no longer is the EU we loved criticising. The EU has shown it can be quick, effective, united, take actions in the field," said Mr Borisov, who built a controversial fence that has cut arrivals from Turkey by a third this year to 12,500 people.
The EBCG is an expansion of Frontex, which was founded in 2004 to help coordinate Europe-wide efforts to combat people smuggling and illegal migration.
The Warsaw-based agency proved inefficient last year when it was caught off guard by the hundreds of thousands of people who began trekking up from Greece across the western Balkans towards northern Europe.
With limited staffing and powers, Frontex was unable to effectively patrol the EU's external borders, including those of front line countries Greece and Italy - the points at which most refugees enter.
The uncontrolled arrival of well over a million people, many fleeing war in Syria, triggered chaos on the continent, prompting key transit nations along the refugee trail to seal their borders with fences.
The influx also heightened tensions inside the bloc, with eastern and central European nations lambasting Germany's "open-door" policy which they claim allowed extremists to pose as refugees and help to carry out attacks inside Europe.
And while arrivals in Bulgaria and Greece - the main point of entry to Europe last year - have now dropped, the numbers in Italy are the same.
Bitter divisions over how to distribute the refugees across the continent have led the EU to adopt an increasingly tough stance on economic migrants, many of them from African countries, and people who cross illegally.
Mr Avramopoulos said on Thursday that the bloc needed to focus on its policy for returning such people. "The door is open for the ones who are eligible for international protection. And closed to the ones who want to cross our borders illegally," he said.
* Reuters, Agence France-Presse
http://ift.tt/2d6DV0w
3Novices Europe
No comments:
Post a Comment