Failure to act in Syria risks ‘total war’ for region: Hollande

Several countries, especially eastern European ones, have balked at the EU’s attempts to impose quotas for taking in refugees. So far, about 2,000 have signed the petition calling for the plebiscite. Germany and France stand ready…It is not possible to resolve the refugee crisis by countries acting alone. That figure lags behind actual arrivals as officials struggle to process all applications. This was followed by asylum seekers from Albania, Afghanistan, Iraq and Serbia.

“Nothing would be more pointless” than for nations to try to face such challenges on their own, he said.

Europe’s richest economy expects between 800,000 and one million newcomers this year.

But a few 40 percent of people who fail to obtain asylum or residency in the 28-nation European Union over the past several years have been sent home.

Altmaier is to take over the overall political coordination, according to a German government press release.

Italy and Greece have both reduced the use of immigration detention. Even though member states have had the right to do so, it has rarely been enforced.

“What happens there will determine the balance of the whole region for a long time”, Mr Hollande told European lawmakers yesterday in Strasbourg.

UKIP leader Nigel Farage provoked French President Hollande to admit in a debate in the European Parliament, Strasbourg today that Brexit was a logical choice.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel reorganised her country’s handling of the refugee crisis on Wednesday.

It is the refugee crisis this summer that has most tested a few of the continent’s basic principles – and highest achievements – including the free movement of people within the Schengen zone. The UKIP leader said he believed the disarray in Europe had made it likely Britons would vote to leave the European Union at a referendum in the next couple of years and hoped that this would spell the end for a project now “absolutely corrupted”.

Speaking four days after Germany celebrated the 25th anniversary of the reunification of east and west, France’s socialist President Hollande paid tribute to his conservative counterpart from Berlin, stressing Europe should remain a diverse alliance of sovereign states while strengthening common policies.

France and Germany have highlighted the need for European countries to act together for resolving the ongoing refugee crisis and the conflict in Syria.

“The only good reaction to this is not to retreat behind national borders, as the nationalists are saying”. France is now severely diminished, trapped inside a currency from which frankly she can’t recover and the French voice in this relationship and in Europe is little more now frankly than a pipsqueak.