Germany said on Tuesday that it will take in more than 1,500 refugees from Greece, in addition to the 150 unaccompanied miners whose camp caught fire on the island of Lesbos as Berlin tried to generate a new EU reaction to a migration crisis that has erupted for years.
EU countries have been forced to take on the challenge when thousands of former occupiers of the Moria countryside in Lesbos slept in abandoned buildings, roadsides and roofs, after their shelters were destroyed by a chimney on the night of 8 September.
German Vice-Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Chancellor Angela Merkel’s left-right coalition agreed to take in 1,553 refugees from Greece, in addition to unaccompanied minors from the burned camp.
Germany will now also welcome families with young people who have already been given prestige as refugees in Greece, but who may not be from Moria.
Moria’s chimney forced its 12,000 former occupants to sleep on the streets of deserted buildings, on the edges of roads and even on rooftops Photo: AFP / ANGELOS TZORTZINIS
France has agreed to accommodate 150 children in the camp, while other EU countries admit a total of 100 other dying young people.
Merkel lamented the lack of a concerted European reaction on Tuesday on which she is credited.
“This is a sign of Europe’s values and capacity for action,” he said at an assembly of his parliamentary organization in Berlin, according to the participants.
Meanwhile, Greek said six suspects, adding “young foreigners,” had been arrested in Lesbos in connection with the fire.
Thousands of migrants have been left wandering aimlessly around the island for days. Photo: AFP / ANGELOS TZORTZINIS
Greek officials have continually said that the chimney began through migrants who were remote after testing positive for coronavirus.
Another fireplace erupted Tuesday night near a camp on the island of Samos where more than 4,700 migrants live.
“There is a place for a wildfire near the camp, but it is manageable,” a source of the fire site told the AFP.
Few migrants remain in the Moria refugee camp on the Greek island of Lesbos after a chimney destroyed the facility a few days ago. Some have moved to a new nearby tent camp, while more than 11,000 people have been sleeping on the streets since the destroyed camp Photo: AFPTV / Will VASSILOPOULOS
European Council chief Charles Michel, who was flying to Lesbos after speaking with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in Athens, suggested that the bloc of 27 nations “take on more responsibilities. “
“We need the efforts of the Greek authorities,” Michel said.
“We want to go further to improve our Border Controls Array. . . we will have to have more partnerships with third countries, we cannot solve everything on our own,” he said on a hill overlooking a new tent camp established through the Greek Authorities.
Map of Moria migrant camp on Lesbos island in Greece Photo: AFP / Gal ROMA
EU Internal Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson said that “between 8 and 9,000 more people will quickly set up a transit shelter there. “
Five years after more than one million asylum seekers arrived in Europe, many of whom fled the wars in Iraq and Syria, the question of the percentage of the bloc in its daily refugee work remains sensitive.
Opposition from Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia to receiving refugees has been a major obstacle in the EU to reform their immigration and asylum policies.
Even in Germany, politicians hesitate to see the same scenes of mass arrivals of migrants as in 2015, which the right took advantage of to gain a place in parliament.
This time, the Merkel government has insisted that it is imperative to find a European solution to the problem.
A “fair and effective response” to the challenge is needed, Michel said in Athens.
Many migrants refused to enter the new white carp camp near the port village of Panagiouda, fearing they would not pass through the interior once.
Others, however, reluctantly see him in the scorching heat.
On Tuesday, Greece’s Ministry of Migration, about 1,000 of Moria’s 12,000 migrants, had been housed on the site.
Of these, 21 were tested for coronavirus.
“There’s nothing in the camp, no showers, no mattresses,” Malik, an Algerian migrant, told AFP on the phone from the camp where he now lives with his wife and five children.
“There’s one meal a day and they give us a box of six bottles of water,” explains the French teacher.
Many migrants also animosity of the people of Lesbos.
Kostas Mountzouris, governor of the northern Aegean region covering Lesbos and one of the most fervent warring parties in the new camp, on Tuesday called on local businesses to demonstrate and call for “the expulsion of the migrants from the island. “