EU action sought on migrants

VIENNA: Serbia and Macedonia’s foreign ministers called for EU action on Europe’s migrant crisis at a summit on Thursday of leaders from the western Balkans, attended by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Both have become major transit countries for tens of thousands of migrants trying to reach the European Union in recent months, with Macedonia last week forced to declare a state of emergency.
“We are faced with the biggest refugee crisis since Second World War. It is a true migration of peoples and Serbia is a transit country,” Serbia’s Ivica Dacic said.
“This is a problem of the European Union and we (the transit countries) are expected to come up with an action plan,” he said. “I think the European Union has to come up with a plan first,” he said. “I have to be very direct here. Please understand, we are bearing the brunt of the problem.”
This was echoed by Nikola Poposki, his counterpart from Macedonia, which he said is currently having to deal with 3,000 migrants arriving every day from EU member Greece.
“We are not going to do the job with the 90,000 euros that we have received so far and we are probably not going to reach the objective with the one million euros that have been announced,” he said.
“Unless we have a European answer to this issue, none of us should be under any illusion that this will be solved,” Poposki said.
“Now we will need to act, and probably with this Vienna conference we can … come to a solution which is a European one.”
German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that Europe’s migrant crisis is a “challenge that strikes at the very core of our European values, the values of humanity and solidarity”.
Reiterating his call for a reform of the Dublin Accords “to distribute refugees fairly within the EU”, he said that Germany will contribute one million euros to help the western Balkans counties cope with the migrants, as well as food and other supplies.
But he also called on western Balkans governments “to help manage the expectations of your citizens and provide them with a realistic picture of their virtually non-existent chances of being granted asylum in Germany”.
Almost 40 per cent of asylum-seekers in Germany are from the western Balkan countries, Steinmeier said.
Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz agreed that a “pan-European solution … is desperately needed.”