Commission proposes new migration aid rules to help Greece

The European Commission has proposed new EU humanitarian assistance rules for a "decisive and effective" distribution of €700 million in aid to member states struggling under the migration crisis.

EU humanitarian aid commissioner Christos Stylianides said the proposal would close a gap in EU aid for member states and release €300 million immediately for food, tents and water. Another €400 million would follow in the subsequent two years.

"With this proposal, we will be able to deliver emergency assistance for crises much faster than before inside the European Union, " he said.

Though modelled on other humanitarian programmes outside the EU, officials insisted the programme would not divert funds from existing operations around the world.

As the proposal passes to member states and the European Parliament for approval, Mr Stylianides said “no time can be lost in deploying all means possible to prevent humanitarian suffering within our own borders”.

With thousands stranded on the Greek-Macedonian border, Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said the new proposal would assist Greece and urged EU governments to speed up talks on a relocation programme.

‘Crisis’

“It was foreseeable that this would lead to a huge humanitarian crisis,” he said.

Last week Greece announced it required €483 million to cope in the refugee crisis and, with pressure building on its border to Macedonia, a Greek government spokesman said the emergency funding would only be a "temporary measure".

Ahead of next Monday's special migration summit, Germany's chancellor Angela Merkel said the pictures from Idomeni drove home the urgency of reaching agreement on joint EU migration measures.

“The pictures show us clearly every day that there is a need for talks,” she said in Berlin. “We . . . need to deal with the very difficult situation in Greece and . . . end the politics of waving people through, to return to the Schengen system as soon as possible.”

‘Lop-sided decision’

In an interview Ms Merkel criticised the “lop-sided” decision by

Austria

imposing an 80-a-day asylum application cap. “Whoever closes national borders does nothing to fight the causes of flight and risks economic damage into the bargain,” she told

Volksstimme

.

Austria's chancellor Werner Faymann responded in the Kurier daily that, if Germany was so anxious to take asylum seekers, it should "bring them in directly to Germany from Turkey or Jordan".

“Austria cannot become a distribution centre – that has to end,” he said, noting that Germany “lets us know daily that it will only allow 1,000 or 2,000 into the country”.

European Council president Donald Tusk gave his backing to the German criticism of national migration crisis measures. He defended the decision to halt migrants in Greece as in line with EU migration rules.

“We have to avoid an illusion that, instead of the full respect for Schengen rules, there might be another, easy and convenient European solution,” he said. “Respecting the Schengen rules will not solve the migration crisis. But without it we have no chance whatsoever to resolve it.”