Refugees....

Tusk calls new EU summit on refugees

Countries still deadlocked over plan to relocate asylum-seekers.

By Jacopo Barigazzi

European Council President Donald Tusk announced Thursday he is convening another emergency summit of EU leaders next week to try to reach an agreement on how to deal with the migration crisis.

In a message on Twitter, Tusk said the meeting would be held the evening of September 23. The decision comes after EU countries were deadlocked this week over a plan to relocate 120,000 refugees across Europe. Several countries remain opposed to the plan, put forward last week by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, because it would impose mandatory quotas for the acceptance of asylum-seekers.

The decision to hold a summit also comes as the crisis escalates into scenes of mayhem along the Hungary-Serbia border, and as thousands of refugees arrive daily in Europe from the Middle East and Africa. The last EU summit on the issue of migration, held in June, was marked by sharp disagreements and harsh words among EU leaders.

EU officials have spent days trying to broker an agreement on the new relocation plan for asylum-seekers, and are hoping to avoid turning to a last-ditch, “nuclear” option: a qualified majority vote that would force through a decision over the objection of countries opposed to it.

But diplomats said there is a growing possibility that a decision-making option normally used for less controversial issues could come into play on this one.

It’s known by one of the acronyms frequently heard in Brussels policy-wonk conversations: QMV, for qualified majority voting. It is a principle introduced to avoid the need to find a unanimous consensus on every issue and means that a decision can instead be taken if two conditions are met: when 55 percent of EU member states vote in favor of a measure, and when it is supported by member states representing at least 65 percent of the total EU population.

The prospect of using QMV to impose a plan for the relocation of a further 120,000 refugees, as proposed by Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in his State of the Union speech, has emerged after EU countries failed Monday to reach a consensus on it.

EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, at the end of that meeting, stressed that “a majority of the member states are ready to move forward, but not all.”

With that majority, the Council could push forward the new plan using QMV. But doing so on such a contentious issue would be politically risky.

“As far as I can recall it has never been used on delicate issues like migration,” said a senior EU diplomat.

The way forward

By Thursday, little was clear about how the EU will reach a decision on a crisis that shows signs of only getting worse. Leaders were still up in the air about whether a final decision could be made at ministerial level or at another summit.

“If there is an extraordinary European Council, it will be to discuss migration at a higher level, the Dublin or the Schengen agreements for example, and not to talk about legislation. It is the Council of interior ministers where decisions over relocation can be taken,” an EU diplomat said before Tusk announced he would call a new summit.

Another special meeting of interior ministers has already been set for next Tuesday, one day before the summit.

But reluctant countries, mainly in Eastern Europe, are not softening their line. Slovakia, one of the strongest opponents of the relocation plans put forward by the Commission, will resist implementing EU decisions to impose mandatory quotas of asylum seekers on member states, Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Wednesday. He told parliament that Slovakia would not accept any decision made by a qualified majority.

“Nobody will dictate to us what to do,” Fico said.

There are other sticking points, such as on “hotspots,” which are designed by the Commission to quickly detect migrants in frontline states who are in need of protection and enact return policies for those who are not.

Nuclear fallout

Even if qualified majority voting could offer a way out of the standoff, it would be politically risky and even damaging to European unity for a number of reasons, EU sources say.

First of all, Europe works by consensus, trying to find the larger possible majority on every issue — and with qualify majority some countries get cornered.

Secondly, diplomats worry there would also be implications for the very people they are trying to help: the refugees. “We are talking about human beings. Is it easy to imagine how refugees would be welcomed by the local population in a state that openly opposes their arrival?” said one EU official.

‘We cannot abandon our principles’

Germany is ready to consider the QMV option if needed, an EU diplomat said, pointing out that Berlin is very much aware of the problematic consequences it could entail.

Among countries opposing this new relocation scheme, mainly in Eastern Europe, there is a mixture of anger and defiance about the possible use of a qualified majority.

It would be “very dangerous” to use it, said a Hungarian diplomat. “Legally, it would be feasible but it would be a political and institutional problem.”

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, in an interview with Die Welt, said a decision from Europe to impose quotas over some countries’ objection would not be a wise decision, but “it will be the law and we will have to accept it.”

The Slovak interior minister, Robert Kalinak, said his country was not afraid of being outnumbered on the issue. “There is the real possibility of the use of a qualified majority, but just because of this threat we cannot abandon our principles,” he told journalists after Monday’s failed ministerial meeting.

Others made clear that they are doing their best to avoid this option.

In a meeting with the EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, Czech Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek stressed the need for a common solution and to avoid the use of qualified majority, said an Eastern European diplomat. A Polish diplomatic source also stressed that steamrolling reluctant countries would be counter-productive.

“Qualified majority vote is not the way forward,” the source said.

EU officials said the summit might be the best hope for avoiding using the nuclear option.

The chicken-egg question

EU officials must also come to grips with the hotspots issue, particularly foot-dragging by Italy, which would host five of them. Greece is only set to have one.

“In the next months the first relocations of asylum-seekers will start from Italy towards Europe and only then the hotspots will be launched,” Italy’s Interior minister Angelino Alfano was reported as saying in Italian media on Wednesday.

Yet Monday’s interior ministers council put a great emphasis on the quick set up of hotspots as a pre-condition of relocation, according to Jean Asselborn, the interior minister of Luxembourg and chairman of the Council. The council’s conclusions say “the Commission will report on the effective implementation of the hotspots by the end of next week” and that ministers “have requested further, decisive progress” on this front.

“It is the chicken-egg dilemma,” said an EU official. Should the hotspots first be implemented and only afterwards relocation can start, like many EU countries are saying? Or should it be the other way around, as Italy suggests?

Part of the problem is confusion over the term “hotspots,” officials said. If it means registration centers where migrants get a scanning, fingerprinting and identification, they are already in place and EU teams are already working with local authorities. If it means reception centers where refugees and migrants are kept while their applications are examined or while they wait to be returned to their countries, which was what many EU leaders are referring to, then this is not the case yet.

“We are identifying refugees, that is something that we are already doing,” Mario Morcone, the head of the migration department at the Italian Interior Ministry, told POLITICO. “But if by hotspot we mean a place where we keep people locked in, then we will do it only when the Italian government will tell us to do it.”