EU Is Suffering of Severe Migrantaine
News about drowned or rescued migrants/refugees in the Mediterranean have become something usual, a daily matter. The migrant pressures on only several EU member states has put the issue on the EU agenda. At this stage it generally causes migraine in the EU (migraine of migrants = migrantaine). In this subject we follow what commitments the EU makes and how does it implement them.
| © Council of the EUMigration Enters the New EU Strategy on Afghanistan
The European Commission proposed on Monday (July 24th) a upgrading of the elements of the European Union's strategy towards Afghanistan, adding a new one - migration. In the current strategy, adopted in 2014, the core elements were four: promoting peace, security and regional stab ...
Davutoglu, Tusk, Juncker | © Council of the EUDoctor Europe and Mister Turkey
On March 18th, at yet another EU summit, the leaders of member states and Turkey shook hands on a deal, which will not save Europe from the refugees and will not mend the disintegration cracks, neither will it guarantee the restart of the eurointegration process in Turkey. At first glance, it ...
| © Vlada RSDeal with Turkey, Five Principles of Policy towards Russia, New Tension between Serbs and Croats
Last week was a stormy week in the EU. Leaders of member states have surprisingly easy approved the deal with Turkey, according to which it looks like the EU is not fully selling its soul. Although the main principles of the framework, agreed on a week earlier remain, th ...
Ahmet Davutoglu, Boyko Borissov | © Council of the EUDid the EU Sell Its Soul to Turkey?
Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. This is an old method of doing things that was administered to the Turkey negotiations last Monday (March 7). What the leaders of the 28 member states and Turkey agreed on is just a framework, which is yet to be filled with details in order ...
Donald Tusk, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | © Council of the EUIs the End of Transiting Migrants Near?
Last week, which passed under the sign of preparation for the next in line emergency EU summit, dedicated to the refugee crisis, offered another dose of paradoxes. European Council President Donald Tusk (Poland, EPP), a spokesman for the Eastern European hardliner position regarding the ref ...
Dimitris Avramopoulos | © European CommissionThe Commission Very Much Wants Normality Back by the End of the Year
On the eve of the next in line emergency summit (March 7), dedicated to the refugee crisis, the European Commission presented a roadmap for the restoration of Schengen. Despite the many “if”-s in the roadmap, the EC expects by the end of December 2016 to have norm ...
David Cameron, Alexis Tsipras | © Council of the EUBritish Question Remains Overshadowed by the Refugee Crisis
You can judge the Council by the Arrivals. This is what the period is called before every meeting of the ministers or the leaders of the EU when they stop in front of journalists at the entrance of the Consilium to clarify what they are going to fight for during the meeting. To most journalists, ...
Jean-Claude Juncker, Donald Tusk | © European ParliamentTwo Months to Europe's Suicide
Up until a year ago it was taboo to even think it was possible that a country should leave the euro area, while in the last week alone so much was said about a possible death of the European Union that there is even an exact date set. The Union has two more months to live. The final countdown wa ...
| © European CommissionEU Is Temporarily Closed Until Solidarity Returns
Passing the hot refugee potato had to finish at some point. Destination countries finally said basta and lowered the barriers after sending a clear message to transit countries – while there is no solidarity, there is no freedom of movement. In other words without solidarity there is no EU ...
| © European CommissionThe Fifth Element in the Autumn Economic Forecast
For years now demographics has been an important topic in the EU, provoked by an ageing population, but also by the migratory flows, internal for the EU until recently and from the outside in currently. The topic, however, remained at the level of national debate and measures. At the Europe ...
Jean-Claude Juncker | © European ParliamentMember States Request Loosening of Budget Discipline Because of Refugees
All member states, practically with no exclusions, have mentioned the refugee problem as a large budget expense. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker (Luxembourg, EPP) said so to MEPs this week, stating before that he was surprised by this. In September, ministers of finance of the ...
Pablo Iglesias | © European ParliamentInaction and Euroscepticism Are Killing the European Project
We could add in scorning our values any time we feel heat. Those are the conclusions of the Tuesday morning debate in the European Parliament, during which the bosses of the European Commission and the European Council, Jean-Claude Juncker and Donald Tusk, gave an account of the O ...
Angela Merkel, Juncker, Antonio Guterres | © European CommissionRefugees Will Teach Balkan States to Talk to Each Other
The next in a series of meetings dedicated to the refugee crisis started with an expectation of failure, but ended in success, if the agreement on the text of a declaration could be qualified as success. In the middle of last week, European Commission President Jean-Claude Ju ...
Boyko Borissov | © Council of EUEU Is Getting Better at Doing Nothing on the Migrant Crisis
The October summit, fourth in a row dedicated to the migrant-refugee crisis, could as well not have happened at all. The only thing it could have been remembered for is that the Bulgarian Prime Minister left it shortly before its ending because of an accident at the Bulgarian-Turkish border ...
| © Council of the EUDublin is Dead, Long Live Dublin!
You will probably not be surprised that today starts the fourth in a row summit dedicated to the migrant-refugee problem. It is only just now, however, that someone shouted “The king is naked!”. The subject is accompanied by a lot of tension, discussions, arguments, wall-bu ...
Jyrki Katainen, Kristalina Georgieva | © European CommissionEuropean Budget Cuts Boomerang Back
Do you remember the battle for the 7-year European budget for the 2014-2020 period? How British Prime Minister David Cameron was proud of the fact that he won the fight for the first real lowering of the European budget, despite the EU had expanded with one more member? He even went as ...
Ranko Ostojic | © Council of the EUThe EU Agreed on a Drop in the Ocean
The decision of EU Ministers of Interior from last week for the relocation of 120 000 refugees from Italy and Greece got a very dramatic reception. There were talks of a momentous decision to mark the beginning of the end of the EU for the Council of Ministers dared to use the fully legal ...
Angela Merkel | © Council of the EUNot a G-spot, Not a Hotspot, but Migration Management Support Teams
Take it easy, no one understood exactly what a hotspot is. It is not only Prime Minister Boyko Borissov. This was admitted by EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos himself on Wednesday noon. At a press conference after the end of the European ...
Miro Cerar, Zoran Milanovic | © Council of the EUIs There Risk to Bilateral Relations in South-East Europe?
When the refugee crisis subsides and if the EU has survived and managed to reach a decision for common action, the subject will come up in the agenda of how bad the wounds are that states of South-East Europe are dealing to each other at the moment in the attempt to save their skin &ld ...
| © Council of EUThe EU Is Disintegrating Before Our Very Eyes
The day before it was Malta, yesterday were Italy and Greece, and today are Hungary, Croatia, Austria, and Germany. One by one member states are becoming panic-stricken and terrified about how are they going to deal with the tens of thousands of refugees that are trying to get to the EU and fi ...
Avramopoulos, Timmermans, Asselborn | © Council of the EUThe Great Wall of Hungary
The Great Wall of China was built in the 7th century BC to protect the empire from the nomadic tribes’ raids. It is one of the seven wonders of the world. Soon the European Union will have its first Great Wall of Hungary which will quite possibly go down in history as the reason for the di ...
Margot Wallstrom, Meglena Kuneva | © Council of the EUBulgaria: The Permanent Relocation Mechanism Is Not Sustainable
Ministers of Home Affairs and Justice are gathering today for an emergency meeting at which they need to agree on the revised proposal of the European Commission on the resettlement of 160 thousand refugees from Italy, Greece, and Hungary. Apart from the temporary solution, the E ...
Nigel Farage | © European ParliamentCentral European MEPs Massively Against Refugees Resolution
Voting in the European Parliament of a non-binding resolution on refugees went by nationality. Party unity was destroyed by national differences in attitude towards the migrant-refugee crisis and the method of dealing with it. As expected, most MEPs from Central Europea ...
| © European CommissionEuropean Media with a Joint Appeal to Leaders to Solve Refugee Problem
Several large European newspapers united in a joint appeal to European leaders asking them to urgently start looking for a solution to the refugee crisis. Spanish El País, German Die Zeit, Italian la Repubblica, French Libération, British The Independent, Greek I Kathimer ...
Jean-Claude Juncker | © European ParliamentA Shift of Tone in the Migration Debate in the European Parliament
Compared to the first debate on the migration and refugees issue last spring, named historic by many in Strasbourg, Wednesday's discussion in the European Parliament sounded different. At the end of April, MEPs split by partisan lines on EC President Jean-Claude Juncker’s id ...
Bachvarova, Mitov, Kuneva, Kalfin | © Government Information ServiceBulgaria Is Ready To Accept Additional Refugees
24 hours prior to the long anticipated first address of European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to the Members of the European Parliament on the state of the Union, the debate on the new Commission proposals for dealing with the migrant-refugee crisis, and four day ...
Jean-Claude Juncker | © European CommissionRefugee Crisis Reveals Total Lack of EU
One of the most common explanations you could hear this summer from the European Commission regarding the refugee crisis and individual measures, taken up by member states to cope with it, was that guarding the external borders is member countries’ responsibility. In other words, they can ...
Donald Tusk, Viktor Orban | © Council of the EUTotalitarian Legacy in the Refugee Crisis
President of the European Council Donald Tusk – Polish activist from the pro-democratic movement “Solidarity” – noted recently that division in Europe in attitude towards the refugees is along the East-West axis. This geographic division is only at the surface. A deeper l ...
| © European CommissionIs This the Europe We Wanted?
The romance of a unified Europe is long gone, but today more than ever you can feel its absence in a painful, even scary way. More and more frequently you see headlines like “Did Europe die?”, “Has the end of Europe come?”, and other similar ones that don’t even end ...
Frans Timmermans | © European ParliamentDemocracy's Red Lines
Exactly 10 days after the commemorations of the 70-th anniversary from the victory over Nazism and fascism in the European Parliament there was a debate which showed that nothing was defeated on 9 May 1945 but was just exhausted. During a two-hour long discussion, attended by Hungary Prime Minis ...
| © European ParliamentJuncker Lost Support of His Own Group on Migration but Won Applause by the Rest
The left wing, the Liberals, the Greens and the European Commission stood up against the Council and the right wing in the European Parliament on the issue of migration during the debate on Wednesday (29 April) in the European Parliament, described by EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopou ...
| © Council of the EUEU Decided To Work Along the Line of Least Resistance
Despite the huge expectations and the demanding situation, the leaders of the EU member states failed to agree on the most serious issues but only on those that are the easiest to do. They decided the budget for the European border agency FRONTEX to be tripled to fully finance the missions Trito ...
| © European CommissionIn the Mediterranean Europe Is Facing Tony Blair's Dilemma
The leaders of the EU member states have gathered in Brussels today for an extraordinary summit to try and find a common solution to the problem with the thousands of tragic deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean. An occasion for the summit is the latest tragic incident last weeken ...
| © Council of the EU