Europe’s Solidarity Continues to Suffer As Refugee Crisis Goes On

The EU and its member states are still struggling to develop a common response.

While the leaders note that “it is indispensable to regain control over the external borders” of Europe, the idea that the agency could send personnel, ships or planes to a country even if that nation opposes the deployment is reviving old fears about a loss of national sovereignty to unelected officials in Brussels.

The meeting, held at the Austrian embassy in Brussels before a broader EU summit, was attended by almost a dozen European leaders, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is counting on Ankara to stem the flow of hundreds thousands of Syrians from Turkey into Greece and onward to Germany and other EU countries.

In addition to Merkel and Davutoglu, the meeting on Thursday was attended by nine other EU leaders, Timmermans, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Parliament President Martin Schulz.

Before chairing the summit, European Council President Donald Tusk acknowledged that the border agency is a “most controversial idea” but said that passport-free travel in the 26-nation Schengen area would be compromised if Europe’s outside borders are porous.

Countries such as Hungary, which have pressed for intervention on Greece’s border, have welcomed the proposal in principle, while objecting that the EU-flagged force will be set up too slowly to deal with the current influx. “This means that in the future Europe will not remain vulnerable because the Schengen border is insufficiently protected”, Interfax cited him as saying.

“Implementation is insufficient and has to be speeded up”, the leaders declared in the conclusions on migration at their last summit of the year in Brussels.

The border guard would have a full-time staff of 1,000, twice as many as an existing European Union agency, and would draw on 1,500 officers put on permanent standby by the bloc’s governments.

The plans for a European Border and Coast Guard would almost treble EU spending on frontier defence, and replace Frontex, the EU agency with limited powers to intervene in crises.

Around 4,000 people have been arriving daily this month in Greece from Turkey, the main gateway for migrants, according to a report from Luxembourg, which now holds the European Union’s rotating presidency.

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