EU Considers Internment Camps For Refugees

Brussels meeting is also expected to water down demands that at least 22 countries accept obligatory quotas for refugees

By Ian Traynor

September 14, 2015 "Information Clearing House" - "The Guardian" -   EU governments are expected to back radical new plans for the detention of “irregular migrants”, the creation of large new refugee camps in Italy and Greece and longer-term aims for the funding and building of refugee camps outside the EU to try to stop people coming to Europe.

A crunch meeting of EU interior ministers in Brussels, called to grapple with Europe’s largest refugee crisis since the second world war, was also expected to water down demands from the European commission, strongly supported by Germany, for the obligatory sharing of refugees across at least 22 countries.

A four-page draft statement, prepared on Monday morning by EU ambassadors before the ministers met, focused on “Fortress Europe” policies amid increasing confusion as a number of countries set up border controls in the Schengen free-travel area that embraces 26 countries.

The draft statement, obtained by the Guardian, said “reception facilities will be organised so as to temporarily accommodate people” in Greece and Italy while they are identified, registered, and finger-printed. Their asylum claims are to be processed quickly and those who fail are to be deported promptly, the ministers say in the draft statement.

“It is crucial that robust mechanisms become operational immediately in Italy and Greece to ensure identification, registration and fingerprinting of migrants; to identify persons in need of international protection and support their relocation; and to identify irregular migrants to be returned.”

The Europeans are to set up “rapid border intervention teams” to be deployed at “sensitive external borders”. Failed asylum seekers who are expected to try to move to another EU country from Greece or Italy can be interned, the statement says.

“When voluntary return is not practicable and other measures on return are inadequate to prevent secondary movements, detention measures ... should be applied.”

The European commission demanded last week that at least 22 EU countries accept a new system of quotas for refugees, with 160,000 redistributed from Greece, Italy and Hungary under a binding new system.

Germany is insisting on the binding nature of the proposed scheme and its unilateral decision on Sunday to re-establish national border controls within the Schengen area was widely seen as an attempt to force those resisting mandatory quotas to yield. The resistance is strongest in eastern and central Europe.

The draft says ministers are “committed” to sharing the 160,000, but made no mention of the system being obligatory, said no formal decision on the matter would be taken until next month and appeared to dilute the commission’s call by describing it as “the basis” for a decision, which would also pay “due regard to the flexibility that could be needed by member states in the implementation of the decision, in particular to accommodate unforeseen developments”.

In the medium-term, the draft says, the EU should aim at funding and building refugee camps outside Europe and that failed asylum-seekers could be sent from Europe to these camps, which would not be in their countries of origin.

The EU should aim “at developing safe and sustainable reception capacities in the affected regions and providing lasting prospects and adequate procedures for refugees and their families until return to their country of origin is possible”.

EU governments would then be “in a position to find asylum applications of these persons inadmissible on safe third country grounds ... after which swift assisted return can follow”.

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