Jean Claude Juncker says a number of countries “failed” to respond properly.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker addresses the media on Fridayat the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels.
Europe’s refugee response has been an embarrassment to the continent, European Commission President Jean Claude Juncker said Friday.
He chided European nations who have been bickering for months on how best to deal with the influx of over a million refugees into the continent and said the lack of action is unacceptable. He also denied that the commission was responsible for the failure to execute a coherent plan. Instead, he said, it was the fault of “a number of member states [that] have failed to fully deliver on what we need to do and what needs to be done.”
Greece and Italy have been hardest hit by the flow of refugees fleeing wars in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East because they are often the first country people reach. They argue that countries like Germany, which announced it would welcome refugees, are only providing further incentive for people to make the journey from the Middle East in hope of reaching that prosperous nation. Some countries have said they will refuse to implement the EU’s refugee sharing plan, an attempt to more evenly distribute 160,000 arrivals across the continent.
Juncker said it was embarrassing to explain the stymied European reaction to the refugee flow to countries that neighbor Syria and have taken in millions of refugees fleeing the nearly five-year civil war. Jordan, with a population of 6.5 million, is hosting an estimated 1.5 million refugees. One in five residents in Lebanon is a Syrian refugee.
Turkey, which hosts an estimated 2 million Syrian refugees, recently announced it will allow them to work legally in that country. The measure is aimed at deterring people from leaving the region and heading to Europe.
Juncker also said he wanted to see Europe maintain its open border policy, which allows citizens of the 26-member Schengen Area to cross borders without passports. Some say the policy, which allows both people and goods to move easily about the continent, is a security risk because it could grant too much mobility to terrorists with EU passports. Following the terrorist attacks in Paris in November, concern has heightened that Islamic State group terrorists will use the refugee asylum system to enter Europe and carry out more attacks.
The implications of refugee arrivals on national security have also become a concern in the U.S., particularly in the Republican presidential race. Front-runner Donald Trump said all Muslims should be barred from entering the U.S. until officials can certify they are not possible terrorists, a policy he repeated in Thursday night’s Republican debate.
“It could be people that are going to do great, great destruction,” Trump said of Muslim refugees fleeing war who have applied for asylum in the U.S.
Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush pushed back against Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric, stressing the need for the U.S. to work with allies in the region to defeat the terrorist threat.
“I hope you reconsider this, because this policy is a policy that makes it impossible to build the coalition necessary to take out ISIS. The Kurds are our strongest allies. They're Muslim. You're not going to even allow them to come to our country?” Bush said during the debate. “We have to do this in unison with the Arab world. And sending that signal makes it impossible for us to be serious about taking out ISIS and restoring democracy in Syria.”
Next week, the Republican-controlled Senate will take up a House bill passed after the Paris attacks that would place additional security measures on any refugees applying for asylum in the U.S. Only refugees processed through the system, which can take 18 to 24 months for vetting and security checks, are allowed to enter the country. The House bill would add another step requiring the FBI to certify to the Department of Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence that the applicant is not a security threat.
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