Refugees moved from Italy in a new EU scheme
Migrants and refugees board a train after crossing the Greek-Macedonian border, near Gevgelija, on October 9, 2015. A small group of Eritreans left Italy for Sweden on October 9, 2015, the first contingent of asylum seekers to be moved under a European Union scheme.
PHOTO | ROBERT ATANASOVSKI | AFP
What you need to know:
- The scheme follows months of tensions over the more than 600,000 people who have flooded Europe this year.
- The plan, which hopes to help ease the bloc’s worst migration crisis since World War II, was only given the green light after Brussels flatly overruled stiff opposition from Eastern European nations.
ROME
A small group of Eritreans left Italy for Sweden Friday, the first contingent of asylum seekers to be moved under a European Union scheme to ease the burden of the migration crisis on frontline countries.
Grinning shyly before the media, 19 young Eritreans — five women and 14 men — waved and blew kisses as they boarded a small propeller plane at Rome’s Ciampino airport after hugging members of the Red Cross and UN Refugee agency goodbye.
“Today is an important day for the European Union, it is a day of victory ... for those who believe in Europe, for those who believed in saving human lives,” Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano told journalists after the departure.
“It is a defeat for those who claim it is better for the Mediterranean to become a lake of death ... and believe that scaring the European people is the way forward,” he added.
The scheme follows months of tensions over the more than 600,000 people who have flooded Europe this year.
RELOCATION PLANS
EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and Luxembourg minister Jean Asselborn, whose country holds the EU presidency, were in Rome to launch the scheme to relocate 160,000 people from Italy and Greece to other member states in the 28-nation bloc over the next two years.
The plan, which hopes to help ease the bloc’s worst migration crisis since World War II, was only given the green light after Brussels flatly overruled stiff opposition from Eastern European nations.
“This is a tangible example of what we can do when we work together. We are nations of immigrants and we’ve made an important step forward,” Avramopoulos said, adding that it showed “Italy is not alone”.
Alfano said Italy was ready to relocate 100 more asylum seekers who would go to Germany and the Netherlands, and the UNHCR said further relocations would take place from Italy at the beginning of next week.
“This is a significant day, a positive and important one,” the UN refugee agency’s southern Europe spokeswoman, Carlotta Sami, told AFP.
“But we know more must be done. There is a great need for measures to be put in place to allow asylum seekers to arrive in Europe safely,” she said, referring to perilous boat crossings in the Mediterranean which have cost over 3,000 people their lives this year alone.
