Tusk warns off migrants
EU Council President Donald Tusk has warned "illegal economic migrants" against coming to Europe. He said that the Schengen rules would enter into force again and refugees would be stopped at the EU's external borders. Is this appeal a good move?
Merkel should endorse Tusk's approach
A common refugee policy can only work if it is based on making the refugees' journey to Western Europe more difficult, writes the conservative daily The Times:
“[Merkel] says she wants Europe to unite behind a workable refugee policy by next Monday. If she is serious she should explicitly endorse Mr Tusk’s language and back his call for a return to the longstanding EU policy that asylum seekers must register in the country in which they arrive in the union. .... It has taken a year and shaken the EU to its foundations but a realisation is dawning that the best way to help Syria’s homeless is to make westward migration less feasible and a return to their own country more so. It can be done, but first the ceasefire has to hold.”
EU Council president stirring up xenophobia
Tusk's warning to migrants was entirely inappropriate, the centre-left daily El País believes:
“Such warnings may have an internal effect in terms of increasing the xenophobia to which the latest Eurobarometer surveys attest, especially in certain Eastern European countries. But they do very little to address the powerful reasons pushing hundreds of thousands of people to risk their own lives and those of their children to get to Europe. This harsh rhetoric further dehumanises the discourse and stirs up even more hostility towards the refugees.”