Tuesday, June 30, 2015

INVASION OF EUROPE: E.U. Leaders Fail to Agree on Quotas to Spread Migrants Across Bloc

Migrants from the Middle East and Asia from Syria, 
Pakistan and Afghanistanin Belgrade, Serbia, on Friday. 
The country has become a transit route for migrants 
heading to European Union nations. 
Credit Koca Sulejmanovic/European Pressphoto Agency
Facing a migration crisis that has infused Europe’s usually arid and consensual decision-making with angry passions, European leaders ended an ill-tempered discussion early Friday about what to do with a vague pledge to spread 40,000 migrants around the Continent.
But they scrapped what had been the heart of a plan to share a burden now borne largely by Greece and Italy — a system of mandatory quotas to spread the tens of thousands of migrants, now in the two countries, across the European Union.
Migrants on Friday in Skopje, Macedonia, aboard a 
train bound for the Serbian border. Credit Getty Images
Heated arguments among leaders at a two-day summit meeting in Brussels exposed deep divisions and even disarray in a European bloc already badly strained by the repeated failure of talks to prevent a default next week by Greece.
The intersection of the Greek debt crisis and the migration issue also underscored the dangers to the European Union of a potentially bankrupt and destabilized Greece on the front line of what has been an extraordinary surge of migrants to eastern Greek islands from Turkey. Many of them are fleeing conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.
INTERACTIVE: What’s Behind the Surge in 
RefugeesCrossing the Mediterranean Sea
In recent weeks, standoffs with migrants at Europe’s internal borders have led to squabbling among governments and screaming headlines in newspapers, particularly in Britain, about trouble caused by desperate people seeking a better life.
Migrants who enter the European Union in Italy and Greece often seek to reach — and are blocked from — preferred destinations farther north in Europe, where they hope for better job prospects and more generous government benefits.
INTERACTIVE: The Global Struggle to Respond 
to the Worst Refugee Crisis in Generations
Hundreds of migrants were camped out in recent weeks at a crossing between Italy and France, after French border officials denied them entry, and officials at the French port of Calais struggled once again this week to prevent surges of migrants from smuggling onto trucks bound for Britain that use the tunnel crossing the English Channel.
Even so, just hours after finance ministers representing 19 countries that use the euro again failed to break the deadlock between Greece and its creditors, European Union leaders killed proposals that would have forced each country to take a certain number of asylum seekers, opting for a voluntary program instead.
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