Migration in the EU is not a temporal but a future problem

Billions of Euros have been spent on migration in the EU since 2015. Only to Greece the European Commission has allocated about 1 billion EUR financial aid for the year 2020. Even with a catastrophic event such as the burning camp on Lesvos and in Covid-19 times this would mean about 20,000 EUR per refugee per year, which exceeds the GDP per capita of many EU member states, including Greece. This financial aid does not include all the donations from public and private sources. And yet, the problem of migration has not been solved, neither for the migrants, nor for the EU. The refugees in Kara Tepe are missing basic living standards because the funds provided are not reaching them. The people and the funds are lost somewhere on the way, in the bureaucratic and intrasparent system of the EU. The top politicians such as von der Leyen should take responsibility and explain the current situation of asylum seekers on the EU soil.

Why there is still no working solution in place, which is in accordance with the basic EU values of human dignity and rights, freedom and rule of law?

The politicians should finally understand that the migration is not a temporal but a future problem. The newly introduced Pact on Migration and Asylum will not change anything, if it does not solve the old problems with inefficient spending and lack of transparency. What we need is a progress report on the efforts of the new migration policy, which is publicly available and understandable for everyone. We need information on the public spending, not only to which initiatives, NGOs or civic societies it was paid but also on the actual results of it. In addition, the EU should collect data on each individual refugee case, analyse the reasons and the status of the migrants for seeking asylum and find individual solutions under consideration of the core EU values of human dignity and non-discrimination. These data should be then consolidated and processed to develop long-term policies, introduce robust processes and procedures, and finally establish well-functioning institutions and mandates, also in cooperation with other non-EU countries.

- Ina Dimitrieva -