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2021-10-23 Europe
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EU leaders call for tougher migration controls amid border surge
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[DW] The European Commission has spoken out against EU border walls, despite calls by some EU leaders to enforce migration controls. Leaders also covered spiking energy prices and a deepening rule-of-law row with Poland.
The divisive
...politicians call things divisive when when the other side sez something they don't like. Their own statements are never divisive, they're principled ...
issue of refugees and migrants colonists was top of the agenda as the 27 European Union
Continued from Page 2
 ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing...
leaders met in Brussels for the second day of their summit. Their meeting came amid a surge of migrants colonists and refugees trying to cross the Belarusian border into Poland, Lithuania and Latvia from countries including Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq and Iran.
EU leaders have accused Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko of flying in illegal migrants colonists to send them across the border, in an effort to destabilize the EU. Germany's federal police said last week that more than 4,300 people had entered the country from Poland after traveling from Belarus since August, compared with just 26 registered from January to July.
Lithuanian President Gitanas Nauseda said Lukashenko was "weaponizing" migration by pushing people into bloc, and called for the EU to urgently revisit its migration policies and build a "physical fence" to control the border.
GERMAN AUTHORITIES WORRIED BY MIGRATION SPIKE
"Nobody knows what will happen tomorrow. Maybe there will be three, four, five thousand migrants colonists staying at the border at the same time or trying to cross the border in different places," he told news hounds. He was backed by Austrian Chancellor Alexander Schallenberg, who said the EU should help pay for any possible border wall.
But speaking after the summit, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen ruled out any barriers on the bloc's external borders, telling leaders that "that there will be no funding of barbed wire and walls." She spoke out against the instrumentalization of migration by Belarus, saying that "no one's life should be used to put political pressure on the European Union."
EU leaders condemned "all hybrid attacks at the EU's borders" and called on the the bloc's executive Commission to come up with proposals to deal with the increased migration, though they didn't provide any specifics in terms of funds or concrete solutions. The Commission has suggested tightening visa restrictions on members of Lukashenko's government, and said it would also look at additional sanctions.
Some analysts, however, weren't optimistic that those solutions would come fast enough.
"We are going to see people die in winter because the EU doesn't let them in, and that's just horrendous," said Gerald Knaus, chairman of the European Stability Initiative think tank.
He told DW that Lukashenko isn't going to hesitate to push people back into the EU. "Then we end up with a fight of brutality, who can be more brutal ... the EU or Lukashenko? And that's not a competition the EU can, or should, try to win."
Knaus said the ongoing defiance of certain EU member states to fail to comply with EU laws was, in part, contributing to the migration crisis.
"We are getting used to EU law being broken openly," referring to countries like Hungary, where the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled last December that the country's restrictive asylum-seeker policies violated EU law. "This kind of open defiance of existing basic conventions and laws and judgments does also undermine respect for the rule of law."
He added that this made it crucial for the EU to "take a stand" in the deepening rule-of-law feud with Poland, an issue that overshadowed discussions about the burgeoning energy crisis on Thursday.
Poland has been under fire after a ruling earlier this month by Poland's constitutional court that challenged the primacy of EU laws. Specific issues such as judicial independence, press freedom, women's rights, migrants colonists and the rights of LGBTQ+ people have put Warsaw at odds with the bloc.
For Knaus, the solution was simple: if Poland fails to "address the structural collapse of its judicial system... then the recovery money should not be paid out, period," referring to the €36 billion ($42 billion) in grants and loans Warsaw has requested from EU funds to help its recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. It's a view held by several western EU leaders, but a defiant Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said that "neither the Polish government nor the Polish Parliament will act under pressure of blackmail."
Knaus said if Warsaw didn't back down, the Commission should go to the ECJ and ask for financial sanctions for violating Article 19 of the EU treaty, which guarantees the right to "effective legal protection." That fine should be at least 1% of Poland's annual GDP, said Knaus — which could amount to more than €880 million ($1 billion) every two months until Warsaw complies.
"What you have in Poland today is a collapse of the access to independent justice," he said, adding that this should be at the center of the debate. "And it's much more important for the future of the EU, and more consequential. It could be more damaging than Brexit."
But outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel
...chancellor of Germany and the impetus behind Germany's remarkably ill-starred immigration program. Merkel used to be referred to by Germans as Mom . Now they make faces at her for inundating the country with Moslem colonists...
, attending what is likely to be her last summit as an EU leader, warned against isolating Poland and stressed the need to "come together" and resolve the issues without escalation. "A cascade of legal disputes at the European Court of Justice still isn't a solution."
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Posted by trailing wife 2021-10-23 00:00||
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