Months of European efforts to come up with common policies on mass immigration unravelled on Sunday when Germany led
a “coalition of the willing” of nine EU countries taking in most refugees from
the Middle East, splitting the union formally on the issues of mandatory
refugee-sharing and funding.
An unprecedented full EU summit with Turkey agreed a fragile pact aimed at stemming the
flow of migrants to Europe via Turkey.
But the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, frustrated by the resistance in
Europe to her policies, also convened a separate mini-summit with seven other
leaders to push a fast-track deal with the Turks and to press ahead with a new
policy of taking in and sharing hundreds of thousands of refugees a year
directly from Turkey.
The surprise mini-summit suggested that Merkel has given up on trying to
persuade her opponents, mostly in eastern Europe, to join a mandatory refugee-sharing scheme
across the EU, although she is also expected to use the pro-quotas coalition to
pressure the naysayers into joining later.
Merkel’s ally on the new policy, Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European commission, said of the mini-summit: “This is a
meeting of those states which are prepared to take in large numbers of refugees
from Turkey legally.”
But he added later that any such agreement would be voluntary and not
binding, while the Dutch rejected German-led calls to resettle large numbers
directly from Turkey.
The frictions triggered by the split were instantly apparent. Donald Tusk,
the president of the European council who chaired the full summit with Turkey, contradicted the mainly west
European emphasis on seeing Ankara as the best hope of slowing the mass
migration to Europe.
“Let us not be naive. Turkey is not the only key to solving the migration
crisis,” said Tusk. “The most important one is our responsibility and duty to
protect our external borders. We cannot outsource this obligation to any third country. I
will repeat this again: without control on our external borders, Schengen will become
history.”
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/29/germanys-plan-to-strike-eu-wide-refugee-sharing-deal-stalls
Structure
of the Lead：
WHO- Immigration
WHEN- Sunday
WHAT- European efforts come up
WHY- mandatory refugee-sharing
and funding
WHERE- Middle East
HOW- splitting the union
formally
1. immigration 移民
2. Unprecedented 空前的
3. Mandatory 強制性
4. Naysayers 反對者
5. Contradicted 矛盾
6. Obligation 義務
