“He who rejects boats, who turns away, who sets fire to refugee camps is not European. Europe is the baker of Kos who gives sandwiches to refugees or to the people who welcomed them at the station in Munich”. With this significant sentence, the president of the European Commission Jean Claude Juncker underlined the need for the logic of reception for all EU member states in the question relating to the refugee emergency.
The theme of the mass exodus from the war zones of Syria, Iraq and the Middle East was absolutely central during the first State of the Union speech given by the president of the European Commission, a speech that touched on many other themes: from employment to the taxman, to concertation. Juncker called for all asylum seekers to be allowed to work and earn wages while they wait for an answer to their application. He strongly argued that we need a homogeneous redistribution of asylum seekers among all EU member states. New tens of thousands of refugees will soon arrive, especially in Greece, Hungary and Italy who, says Juncker, “cannot be left alone to face this gigantic challenge. We therefore need “concerted action on the part of the Union. This is not the time to be afraid. The time has come to take action to manage the refugee crisis and there is no alternative solution”. Juncker admitted that the arrival of migrants is unprecedented but stressed that it is still "0,11% of the population of the European Union". In Lebanon, he recalled, "they represent 25% of the population, a country that has a fifth of our level of well-being".
The call to respect EU rules is also strong. "The European Union has had common rules on asylum since 2008 - explains Juncker - but the EU member countries have not applied these rules". For Juncker, now is the time to respect them because “Europe's credibility is at stake. Our EU – Juncker regretted – is not in good condition. There is not enough Europe in this Union and there is not enough union in the EU”.
What does the Juncker plan for refugees include?
The Plan presented by President Juncker aims at compulsory quotas among the countries belonging to the European Union in the distribution of asylum seekers. Those EU states that refuse to adhere to his plan will be sanctioned with fines equal to 0,002% of the country's GDP. The Juncker plan aims to relocate the 28 refugees among the 120 countries that currently form the European Union arrived in Europe in recent weeks and the 40 asylum seekers who arrived in May mainly in Italy and Greece. The first opposition to this plan has already arrived for several days, in particular from Great Britain and Denmark. Central-Eastern European countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary are also against it.
