EU parliament president: We wouldn't last longer than a day with closed inner borders
Reuters
In Brussels on Wednesday, President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz asserted that Europeans have both a moral and legal duty to take in refugees even as their numbers grow.
Addressing the fact that many European countries re-instated border controls amid the unending flow of refugees and migrants entering the European Union, Schulz stressed that closing borders inside of Europe was not a solution and that even if it sounded "good" it could not be done.
Twenty six countries in Europe are part of the Schengen zone, which allows the free movement of people and goods. Schulz said Europe without Schengen "would last one day, not longer," before people started protesting against it.
Schulz appealed to unity, saying the refugee crisis was "not a German problem, not a Greek problem, not a Hungarian problem [but] our common task."
To help complete this task, Schulz said, the EU must give financial aid to Jordan, Lebanon, and Turkey since they have the most refugees. Europe should not be surprised that those refugees would also flee to the EU if those three countries ran out of money and couldn't feed them anymore.
Schulz also stressed that the financial help should not only come from Europe but also from the US and the Gulf states.
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Continuing tensions between European countries
EU ministers voted on Tuesday for the implantation of quotas to relocate 120,000 refugees all over Europe. That's a small percentage considering that almost half a million refugees that have arrived in Europe so far this year, and thousands more arrive each day.
Although most countries voted yes to the plan, though Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic voted against it. Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico said his country was challenging the decision and made a legal complaint at a EU court.
"We won't implement this decision because we think it can't work," Fico told reporters Wednesday ahead of the EU summit in Brussels, according to the Associated Press.
Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said that although he did not like the use of quotas, he would not challenge them legally, adding that "Europe must not fall apart over solving the migrant crisis," the AP reports.
Thomson Reuters
And Romania's President Klaus Iohannis admitted that his country could easily cope with the extra people the EU wants them to take but disagrees with the notion of quotas.
"Romania is not against refugees, or receiving refugees," Iohannis said, but he added that those quotas should "take into account the realities of every state," according to the AP.
Despite some resistance from certain countries, Schulz also stressed that a durable solution could only be achieved at a European level and that countries needed to show solidarity.
Comparing the number of refugees who entered Europe (almost half a million in 2015), to the number of people living in the EU (over half a billion), Schulz concluded by saying, "This is feasible."
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