HUMAN WRONGS WATCH

The payments are meant to ease the pressure on Italy, whose interior minister, Matteo Salvini, has turned back migrant boats trying to dock at Italian ports.

© REUTERS / Eric Vidal | Photo from Sputnik News.

Merkel Wants to Send Migrants to Special Centers and Police to Guard EU Borders – Reports

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The European Commission has also pledged to provide “full operational support” in the form of EU border guards, asylum officers, translators and officials to take failed asylum seekers back to their home countries.

In addition, Europol would provide up to 20 officers per boat for security checks. Member states would be expected to provide doctors, nurses and other medical staff with all costs to be covered by the EU budget.

During their recent mini-summit in Brussels, EU leaders agreed to set up secure centers for processing asylum claims of Mediterranean migrants only to see the plan thrown into doubt by  Austria, France, Germany and Italy saying they would not allow such centers on their territory.

The commission also reiterated its previous intention of setting up migrant processing centers in non-EU countries to assess asylum claims of people rescued at sea. However, that plan is also in question, after Tunisia and Libya refused to get involved.

The proposals are the latest attempt by the European Commission to spread around the cost of migration because Mediterranean states and countries have had to accepted large numbers of refugees and foot most of the bill.

EU ambassadors will be meeting on Wednesday to discuss the plan, but it remains unclear if all EU member- states will accept it.

READ MORE: ‘They Include Terrorists’: Libya Says No to Taking in Migrants Rejected by EU

Even though the number of migrants crossing the Mediterranean in search of a better life in Europe has sharply fallen since peaking in 2015 and 2016, migration remains a divisive electoral issue on the continent bringing to power a Eurosceptic coalition government in Italy and forcing the German

Chancellor Angela Merkel to hold crisis talks to preserve her coalition with the center-right Bavarian People’s Party.

*SOURCE: SPUTNIK News. Go to ORIGINAL. 

2018 Human Wrongs Watch