European leaders are struggling to agree on action to manage the refugee crisis amid ever deepening divisions, impotence and failure to follow through on earlier pledges.



While David Cameron’s campaign to refashion the terms of Britain’s EU membership was set to occupy much of a critical summit, for many of the other leaders the migration crisis loomed larger, given that an estimated 1.2 million people have entered the European Union this year, mainly from the Middle East.

Leaders were to discuss incendiary proposals tabled by the European commission this week to create an EU border and coastguard, empowered to overrule national governments when the EU’s external frontiers are deemed to be inadequately secured.

Brussels plans to strip Schengen nations of authority over borders Read more

The proposal won strong support on Thursday from the German and French leaders, but in many parts of the EU it was viewed as an assault on national sovereignty.

The summit, the fifth such meeting in a row to focus on the migration emergency, revisited many of the measures that heads of government and interior ministers had decided on since last spring, but had not put into effect.

“The measures have been taken, but not applied,” said the French president, François Hollande, for whom tough security policies are particularly important after the terrorist attacks in Paris last month.

Britain is only marginally involved in the policy debate because it is not part of the 26-country free-travel Schengen zone, takes no part in EU common asylum policies and needs not take part in EU interior policy coordination.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Cameron and François Hollande at the start of summit in Brussels. Photograph: Olivier Hoslet/EPA

The worsening divisions over what to do about refugees, the future of the Schengen area, and the re-establishment of national border controls were laid bare by a mini-summit of eight countries that preceded the full meeting.

The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, led a session of seven other government leaders from Scandinavia, Benelux, Austria, and Greece aimed at trying to agree on how to share quotas of refugees taken directly from Turkey as part of a flagging €3bn (£2.2bn) deal Brussels recently reached with Ankara.

Merkel is the driving force behind the initiative. But the “coalition of the willing” could only attract 8 of 28 EU countries, highlighting that there is no longer a majority in the EU prepared to support a new system of permanent quotas to share refugees across the union.

Hollande made clear that France would observe a system of quotas agreed in September, spreading 160,000 people across the EU from Greece and Italy, but that Paris would not take part in further similar schemes.

Merkel has said the future of the Schengen system could be in jeopardy unless there is more generous burden-sharing of refugees. Around 1 million newcomers have entered Germany this year.

The mini-summit linked governments who were willing to share refugees “voluntarily”, rather than on the mandatory basis being proposed by the European commission. This strongly suggested that, at least for now, Merkel has abandoned hopes of securing a “European solution” to the crisis.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Merkel struck a deal with Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in October, in an attempt to stem the flow of refugees coming through the country. Photograph: Witt/SIPA/Rex Shutterstock

The figures being discussed have rapidly collapsed from the ambitious to the arguably meaningless, given the scale of the problem. A month ago, Berlin and others were talking of taking 400,000-500,000 people directly from Turkey. By Thursday the figure had sunk to 50,000-80,000.

The eastern European states most strongly opposed to taking in refugees were threatened with cuts to the large cash handouts they receive from the EU budget. Apart from Greece, all the countries attending the mini-summit are net contributors to the EU budget and are also the biggest recipients of refugees, an expensive undertaking.

The Austrian chancellor, Werner Faymann, told the eastern European countries they could not expect to shun “solidarity” on refugees while receiving hundreds of billions in transfers from western Europe.

A confidential paper on migration presented to the summit by Luxembourg, which is currently in the EU’s six-month rotating chair, revealed a long list of unredeemed pledges by national governments and false promises.

Of the September agreement to shift 160,000 refugees from Greece and Italy, 184 people had actually been moved to other host countries. Of an earlier agreement to take 22,000 refugees from camps in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, a mere 600 were beneficiaries to date. Of 11 reception centres promised for Greece and Italy months ago, only two were up and running.

And Merkel’s hopes that the deal struck with Turkey in October would stem the flow of people across the Aegean into Greece also appeared to be fading. This month, around 4,000 were making the crossing every day, the report said. This was a bit lower than in November, but the report ascribed the reduction to the weather rather than to Turkish action.

“We agreed a certain number of rules with Turkey,” Hollande said. “If we can’t get control of our external borders, then we can’t go further on the promises we made to Turkey.”