On Tuesday, EU interior ministers failed to reach agreement on plans to tackle the Mediterranean migrant crisis. There was also no decision to carry out proposals for quotas to redistribute 40.000 Syrian and Eritrean asylum seekers who have arrived in the EU. More than 100.000 migrants have arrived in Europe this year, according to the EU’s border agency Frontex. ‘We have made progress today but we are not there yet,’ EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said after the ministerial meeting, ‘but words are not enough’.
On Thursday, Eurozone finance ministers
failed to break the deadlock between Greece and the lenders, the EU and the
IMF. ‘Regrettably, too little progress has been made. No agreement is in
sight’, said Eurogroup chairman Jeroen Dijsselbloem after the meeting. Greek
Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said, ‘We are dangerously close to a state of
mind that accepts an accident’, a Greek euro-exit.
An unprecedented emergency summit of the 19
Eurozone leaders will take place on Monday evening. ‘It is time to discuss on
the highest political level the situation of Greece’, said Donald Tusk,
President of the European Council and of the Eurozone. The summit will be
preceded by another Eurogroup meeting.
Maybe Tusk could also announce an emergency
summit of the 28 European Council members: to discuss the human drama in the
Mediterranean.
