European Union mini-summit on migration – it’s not about numbers

Leaders from 9 European Union countries are meeting on 24 June 2018 in a mini-summit in Brussels, ahead of the EU summit on 28-29 June, to discuss possible solutions on migrants across Europe.

Leaders of Germany, Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands and Spain are meeting for informal talks at the European Commission headquarters in Brussels, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said.

Efforts to reform the EU's asylum laws over the past two years have been unsuccessful, mainly due to the issue of which country should take responsibility for migrants and refugees and for how long.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) – the UN Refugee Agency – estimates that around 40,000 people have arrived in Europe by sea so far in 2018, around half the number who had entered at this time in 2017.

Refugee arrivals in Europe are declining, but the unity of the 28-nation EU bloc has a migration crisis.

Turkey has taken in more refugees than the world's biggest trading bloc. Lebanon and Jordan together have accepted about two million migrants.

Most migrants, from a sea crossing, arrive on the coast of Italy and Greece, and those two countries feel that they have been abandoned by EU partners and legal reforms on asylum seekers. Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are unwilling to share the burden and they have continued to refuse to accept their UN-recommended refugee quotas.

"We do not have a crisis of numbers. We continue to have a crisis of political will," UNHCR Europe chief Sophie Magennis said on 18 June.

MARTINA NICOLLSis an international aid and development consultant, and the authorof:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom(2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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