Refugee crisis expected to dominate Thursday’s EU summit

Many EU media report on today’s summit, the final EU summit of the year, and the challenges that will be raised during the meeting. Les Echos says that today’s meeting of the EU Council meeting will be preceded by a smaller summit, convened by Germany, at which 10 countries “more willing to act” will be discussing a response to the refugee crisis. The Council meeting will take stock of the measures taken since last spring. With only 184 refugees relocated so far (out of 160,000 over two years), the distribution mechanism is “a clear failure,” the French daily adds.

Efimerida Ton Syntakton writes that no decisions are expected to be taken today during the European Council and claims that EU member states will mostly discuss the EC’s proposals. Ahead of today´s EU summit, EC President Jean-Claude Juncker said that “nothing has ever been easy in Europe, and bringing people and things together will never be easy either,” FAZ writes.

Most EU media continue to comment on the EC’s proposals to protect Europe’s external borders. Earlier this week, the EC revealed its plans to create an EU border agency and asked member states to host displaced Syrians currently living in Turkey, under a proposed voluntary scheme aimed at regulating the flow of migrants into the EU and relieving pressure on Ankara. Several media report that President Juncker has told the European Parliament that the passport-free Schengen zone is “here to stay” and that member states must adopt controversial plans for a new border control force.

“We Europeans no longer have many borders. We have one and we have a shared responsibility to protect it,” Mr Juncker said, as quoted by the Mail Online, Mediapool.bg and Nepszabadsag. “European border and coast guard is not the answer to a new need. European border and coast guard is there to repair a weakness of our Schengen system. We are completing what should have been done from the start,” he added.

Speaking before the EP, Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos claimed that the plan would respect member states’ sovereignty, Greek media report. Writing in the Express, Leo McKinstry argues that the founding of an EU border force is another step towards a federal Europe, suggesting that the EU is using the refugee crisis to push a federalist agenda in the continuing Brussels pattern of using “every self-inflicted failure [as] a vehicle for more integration, more central control.”

Meanwhile, the EC has ordered Italy and Greece to use force if necessary to compel migrants and refugees to have their fingerprints taken, a move which obliges them to apply for asylum in Italy rather than move on to other EU countries, all Italian media and most EU media report. The EC also criticised the slow progress made by Rome in setting up six hotspots.

According to Avvenire, European Council President Donald Tusk is also putting pressure on Italy to create detention centers for migrants refusing to be identified. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called the EC’s criticism on hotspots and the infringement procedure for failing to finger-print all migrants “astonishing,” an article in Avvenire states. QN adds that Mr Renzi will meet with Mr Tusk before the EU summit and is ready to criticise the EU for failing to abide by its commitments to redistribute migrants. Yesterday, Greek PM Alexis Tsipras visited one of the six Greek hotspots and said Greece is “fulfilling its obligations” of keeping a human dimension in the reception and registration of all migrants entering Europe, Arte reports.