With the flood of migrants to Europe showing no sign of abating, European Union heads of government are meeting with the Prime Minister of Turkey on Monday to discuss ways of staunching the flow.
About 134,900 migrants have crossed the Mediterranean Sea to Europe so far this year, the The International Organization for Migration said. The group estimates that more than 400 have died making the dangerous journey.
Many migrants arriving in the Europe pass through Turkey. Late last year, officials agreed to an EU-Turkey joint action plan to increase funding and humanitarian aid for migrants in Turkey and help dismantle human smuggling networks
A record 1.2 million people registered for asylum in the European Union in 2015 — more than double the number from the previous year, the EU’s statistics agency Eurostat said. Of those, Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis accounted for more than half of the first-time applicants.
Bottleneck at the border
On Monday morning, about 10,000 people were gathered at the Greek border with Macedonia, CNN’s Arwa Damon reported from the scene.
She said authorities are letting only a few Syrians and Iraqis through to Macedonia each day — meaning Greece is at risk of becoming a mass refugee camp.
Those gathered by the fence dividing the two countries said they hope the meeting Monday in Brussels, Belgium, could result in the borders opening. But the reality is that the past six months have seen more barriers built than removed.
Consensus on crisis?
Last month, ministers from countries along the main Balkan migration route through Europe — Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Austria — agreed to tighten border controls to slow arrivals to a trickle.
Donald Tusk, President of the European Council — as the group of 28 EU leaders is known — said last week that consensus is emerging about how to handle the crisis.
Some human rights groups, including Amnesty International, have criticized the approach European leaders are taking.
“EU efforts to address the refugee crisis have focused on ensuring that refugees and asylum-seekers remain in Turkey, instead of sharing the responsibility for their protection and assistance,” the organization said in statement last week.
The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has described Europe as being “on the cusp of a largely self-induced humanitarian crisis.”
UK military steps in
On Monday, British Prime Minister David Cameron described the migration crisis as “the greatest challenge facing Europe today.”
The British military deployed the landing ship dock RFA Mounts Bay, two cutters and a Wildcat helicopter to the Aegean Sea as part of stepped up NATO efforts to stop smugglers and stem the flow of migrants, Cameron announced in a statement.
The Aegean, a stretch of the Mediterranean separating Turkey and Greece, is the main route used by traffickers bringing migrants into Europe.
The RFA Mounts Bay will join ships from Canada, Germany, Turkey and Greece on patrol.
They will participate in an operation “that aims to reduce the flow of migrants from Turkey to Europe” by spotting smugglers and sharing information with the Turkish coast guard, the statement said. From there, it’s up to the Turkish coast guard whether to turn smugglers’ boats around.
“We’ve got to break the business model of the criminal smugglers and stop the desperate flow of people crammed into makeshift vessels from embarking on a fruitless and perilous journey,” Cameron said.