Dutch
PM says refugee crisis could shut down Europe's open borders for good
EU
leaders use Davos economic summit to voice concern at numbers of
migrants and warn of threat to Schengen agreement over continent-wide
travel
Larry Elliott and
Jill Treanor in Davos
Thursday 21 January
2016 18.56 GMT
Mounting concern in
Europe over the scale of the refugee crisis burst into the open when
the Dutch prime minister warned that without a reduction in the flow
of migrants, border-free travel under the Schengen agreement could
break down within two months.
Speaking in Davos,
at the World Economic Forum, Mark Rutte said Europe was close to
breaking point and needed to come up with a common response or run
the risk that one of the EU’s founding principles would start to
unravel. “We need to get a grip on this issue in the next six to
eight weeks”, Rutte said.
He said in the first
three weeks of this year 35,000 people had crossed the EU’s borders
and this would quadruple once the spring arrives. “We can’t cope
with the numbers any longer. We need to get a grip on this.”
Rutte said that
before the Schengen agreement was killed off, the EU had to try to
make the Dublin agreement – under which refugees should seek asylum
in the first country they reach – work. “No one wants to kill
Schengen, but if it is only a fair-weather system then it cannot
survive.”
Rutte was backed by
Manuel Valls, the French prime minister, who said the refugee crisis
and security challenges posed existential threats to Europe. “The
European project can die, not in decades or years but very fast, if
we are unable to face up to the security challenge.”
Sweden’s prime
minister, Stefan Lofven, expressed doubts about whether the tight
timetable set by Rutte could be met. “I’m not naive,” he said.
“My argument to the countries that are not willing to accept
refugees is that if we can’t handle this the European Union is at
risk. If we cannot do it there is a risk to Schengen.”
Austria announced on
Wednesday that it planned to limit the number of people allowed to
apply for asylum to 1.5% of its population over the next four years.
For this year, the government said in a statement, the number would
be capped at 37,500.
Germany’s finance
minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, said he did not even want to
contemplate whether Germany, which accepted more than 1 million
refugees in 2015, could cope with a similar number this year. He said
Europe had to be prepared to spend billions on a crisis that would
cost a lot more than envisaged.
Migrants and
refugees keep warm in a large tent as they wait to cross the
Greek/Macedonian border, near Idomeni. Photograph: Sakis
Mitrolidis/AFP/Getty Images
Jim Yong-kim, the
president of the World Bank, said the refugee problem had intensified
and he had been asked by the UN chief, Ban Ki-moon, to rethink the
humanitarian response to the crisis so that emergency assistance
formed part of a long-term development plan.
Speaking to the
Guardian in Davos, Jim said the bill for refugees was soaring and a
new approach was needed. “People are attached to staying where they
are but there has to be hope of finding work. “We have to build up
the productive capacity of countries with large numbers of refugees.
We have to make it attractive to stay in these countries.”
Gordon Brown called
for governments, business and charitable foundations to provide the
money to put every Syrian refugee child in school, as he warned that
the greatest humanitarian disaster since the second world war risked
creating a lost generation.
The former British
prime minister, now the UN special envoy for education, told the
Davos economic summit that the current market turmoil should not be
used as an excuse for inaction.
He said: “Whatever
the difficulties in financial markets and whatever difficulties
countries have with their individual aid budgets, we have to come
together in the face of this great humanitarian crisis.”
Brown, said there
were now 60m displaced people around the world, 20m of them refugees.
“Syria is at the epicentre with the fastest growing problem – 12
million displaced persons, 4 million of them refugees, 2 million of
them children.”
Justine Greening,
the UK’s international development secretary, strongly backed the
idea of spending more on schools as part of a comprehensive approach
designed to build up economies in the Middle East.
She said: “Billions
of euros can be spent on failure or they can be put it into a
constructive, positive response which meets what the refugees really
want – education and a job.”
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