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400 unaccompanied minors are said to have left Greece after the Moria fire. Chancellor Merkel and French President Macron hope that other EU countries, in addition to Germany and France, will participate in the admission.
Some 400 minors from the destroyed Greek refugee camp of Moria will be transferred to EU countries. Chancellor Angela Merkel said at a Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung event that she and French President Emmanuel Macron had agreed to accept minors who were brought to mainland Greece at the request of Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
She hopes that other EU member states will also participate, Merkel said. Migration is not just a problem for the countries where migrants arrive, it must become a European responsibility. There is currently no common European migration policy. “And if it continues like this, it will be a heavy burden for Europe.”
“We have known for a long time that people live in degrading conditions,” Merkel said, referring to Moria and other reception centers. The fire in the refugee camp “showed what the problem is like with a magnifying glass.” Germany also wants to help create new and better conditions in Moria. “It can’t stay like this.”
Germany has already taken in more than 460 unaccompanied children, sick children and their families from refugee camps on the Greek islands. More recordings of sick children are already in preparation. The now-promised admission of unaccompanied minors between Merkel and Macron, who have now been brought to the mainland by Greek authorities, will occur regardless of this, according to information from the dpa news agency.
Scholz speaks of “good development”
Vice Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) promised swift support to affected children and youth. It assumes “that there is now a quick fix for unaccompanied minor refugees,” he said. “Germany, France and some other countries are willing to do something,” Scholz said. “We are working on that now.”
Scholz described it as a “good development” that the willingness to help in solidarity is growing. “He referred to this both in Germany and in” Europe in general. “Photographs of the Moria camp, which was largely destroyed by fires , they had “We are all depressed.” When asked if the federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) was also involved in the planned aid for Mora refugees, Scholz said he was “sure that the government will work together here to ensure that Germany makes a contribution based on the solidarity it makes. “
The pressure on Seehofer is growing
Previously, the question of whether Germany could take in more immigrants from the Greek islands on its own and without the participation of other EU countries had previously been discussed in Germany. The federal government had stressed that it should depend on local aid and coordinate with Greece and EU partners.
Representatives of parties, associations and churches had recently increased pressure on Seehofer to allow the refugees from Moria to be accepted quickly. Several states and federal municipalities have offered to host refugees, but are not allowed to do so without the consent of the federal government. Because the authority to make decisions about accepting refugees rests with the federal government.
Coalition partner SPD accused Seehofer of a blocking attitude. The CSU politician must allow refugees to be taken in quickly, “to help these poor and desperate people, especially families and children,” said SPD leader Saskia Esken at the ARD program “Maischberger. The week”. Germany was not able to host the 13,000 people from the Moria camp, “but we will make a significant contribution to this.”
Federal Minister for Family Affairs Franziska Giffey asked Seehofer to give free rein to local authorities and federal states that are willing to accept. It must be possible for those “who have agreed to host refugees, to be allowed to help,” Giffey told RTL and n-tv. “We cannot wait until all the European partner countries have reached an agreement. That will take weeks and months.”
Appeal of several deputies of the Union
Voices had also been raised from the Union calling for more recordings, for example from mainland Greece to alleviate the situation. In a letter to Seehofer, 16 members of the Union Bundestag demanded the admission of 5,000 refugees. “We ask that Germany host 5,000 refugees from the Greek mainland, if possible together with other EU countries, but if necessary alone,” says the letter that the dpa news agency has received. The priority now is not to shape European refugee policy, “but to alleviate the obvious human difficulties.”
One of the signatories of the letter, the spokesman for the political human rights group Michael Brand (CDU), highlighted in the SWRthat the 5,000 people must be refugees who have already undergone an asylum procedure in Greece. Because “of course, the signal should not be sent that Europe will only react if refugee camps are burned.” Foreign policy expert Norbert Röttgen is one of the signatories of the letter.
Federal Development Minister Gerd Müller (CSU) called for the admission of 2,000 Moria refugees to Germany. He himself had already visited the camp two years ago. “This is not a refugee camp, it is a prison. Refugees are locked up as criminals,” Müller said in the ARD. He saw that “Europe and the European Union also have an obligation to agree on a solution to the refugee crisis.”
Middelberg cautions against going alone
Internal CDU politician Mathias Middelberg, however, continues to speak out against a solo German effort. “It is about the political signal that you establish,” emphasized the internal policy spokesman of the Union faction in the Morning magazine of ARD and ZDF. If Germany accepted refugees on its own, the other European countries would sit back and relax. Instead, Middelberg advocated a “circle of the will,” that is, EU states that could jointly decide to accept people from Moria. This would also allow for quick fixes.
The Moria camp was almost completely destroyed in several simultaneous fires Wednesday night. Instead of the planned 3,000 migrants, more than 12,000 people stayed there. On Lesbos, thousands of people spent the first night after the great fire in the streets around the destroyed Moria camp. There were clashes with the police and tear gas was used. Some of the people will initially be staying on boats in the next few days.
