Europe-Middle East-Africa Refugee Crisis General Thread

[politicus]

Let's not. There is a big difference between direct responsibility caused by recent intervention and the indirect effect of actions taken a hundred years ago.

Okay, then tell your friend Tender that. He's the one proposing this be proportional in some way

Tender is not my friend. Cut that out.

[politicus]

Among other things Americans alive today voted for the politicians responsible for these actions. Whereas modern Europeans can hardly be responsible for what the ancestors of some of us did (you are making the classical "Europe is a country" fallacy here).

In addition the two European countries with the major responsibility in this - Britain and France - are not the ones taking most of the refugees and neither of them had universal suffrage when they committed the worst mistakes.

God you are just so wrong on this its unbelievable.

So Americans are responsible because some of us alive voted for politicians who made poor foreign policy decisions, but Europeans aren't? Europe's various governments just sat back during the Cold War and twiddled their thumbs while the big bad USA did all the mucking around? It wasn't just the UK and France that screwed around in the Middle East and Africa during recent decades. And it's not even the Cold War. Just 6 years ago most European countries were happy to have brutal dictators in places like Libya because they could get great deals on oil and gas, and sell them lots of weapons and other goods to support domestic industry. And as we've seen in recent news reports, Russia is also a major player here.

On top of this, tens of millions of Americans are immigrants or their descendants. Then you've got black people, who have systematically been disenfranchised for the past 50 years despite the VRA.

1) Be specific if you want countries other than Britain, France, Soviet Union/Russia (and Portugal pre-1975) to have a direct responsibility for meddling in the Middle East or modern Africa. The development aid given by other countries or the uneven trade patterns hardly make you morally responsible on the level direct military intervention does. Most countries do not actively try to topple dictators and they trade with them. That goes for all of Asia (see Burma) and is not something you can really blame European governments in particular. It is a global responsibility. Besides trying to topple dictators is extremely risky and almost invariably creates new refugee streams as a side effect.

2) Not all Americans are guilty of the mistakes done by your country, but those that reelected Bush in 2004 at least bear a direct responsibility in a way that no Europeans do. This is still a huge difference - and you went back a 150 years, which is absurd - no one are responsible for what their ancestors did.
No European country has had the capacity to play a major role on the world stage post-60s (unless you consider the Soviet Union European), even if France tries once in a while. So a US/EU comparison is pointless. The US simply operates on another level and meddles in far more countries and therefore has far greater responsibility.

Generally you are too vague and all over the place: Are we talking high imperialism, Cold War, post 9/11? What countries are you talking about? (there was no coordinated EU policies, so all this "Europeans did this and that" is rubbish.

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...Okay? No one really brought that up, but whatever to keep up with your "Europe is so superior to everyone" spiel to make yourselves feel better about imperialism, and whitewashing everything "modern" as European.

3) I never claimed Europe is superior. But that Europeans have a right to determine their own future and whom they want to share it with.

4) Everything modern is not European, but Europe and European settler societies obviously are the places where modern technology, organizational structures and most ideology developed, which means Europe had a profound effect on the way the rest of the world developed.

The point is that immigration is pretty much a good part of the solution to Europe's economic problems, both current and future. I pointed out that we're taking a huge number ourselves, which will continue to benefit us for decades, as immigration/accepting refugees has for all of our history.

If you guys want to have a back-and-forth about who's responsibility it is and how imperialism was so great, I'm not interested.

5) I did not read Tenders posts, so there is no "you guys". Two separate debates. You started the imperialism theme yourself by going back 150 years and claiming Europe was responsible for messing up the Middle East, which I logically assumed was a reference to Sykes-Picot et al.

6) Europen countries - like most Asian - exist to form the home for a specific national culture. Economic concerns are secondary to that.

Besides our general experience with Middle Eastern and Muslim East African immigrants is that they are a rather huge net loss. Immigrants are not just immigrants. Cultural compatibility matters a lot, and that is virtually nonexistent when we are talking about Northern Europeans and Arabs. If we were to pick countries we wanted immigrants from the Middle East, Northern Africa, the Sahel region and Eritrea/Somalia/Sudan would be at the bottom together with Afghanistan/Pakistan. You Americans mostly get Hispanics and East Asians, that are far less at odds with Western norms. Forced immigration is not the solution to economic problems + Americans generally overlook that the current skewed demographic distribution is a temporary phenomenon, which will be far less in a generation when big generations die off and we can stabilize on a lower population level. Most of Europe is densely populated and getting a lower population will be a blessing in many ways.

[politicus]

The idea that countries should be a specific homeland for a particular group of people is wrong-headed, and when it's used to justify the persecution of those who are suffering mightily, it becomes evil. If European states decide not to take in asylum seekers because they wish to protect their "national identity," then they have literally chosen a way of conceptualizing the state which is abhorrent. If Slovakia says that they can't take in Syrian refugees because they wish to preserve their ethnic homogeneity, than they might as well deport the Hungarians as well-it's the same fundamental principle of ethnocentrism and violence.

They are "wrongheaded" and "abhorrent" according to your norms, but that is just an opinion. It is the basis for most European and many Asian countries. A country being a national homeland does not exclude historical minorities or limited immigration, it just precludes tilting the ethnic balance to the degree that the majority population lose control.

There is nothing evil in saying Slovakia exists to form a home for the Slovaks and it doesn't preclude minority rights or regional autonomy per se. The rights of a people are as fundamental as the rights of individuals. This becomes clearer when you think of small nations like Tongans, Greenlanders etc. Why shouldn't these people be allowed to have a country where their culture is the dominant one despite their small size? European nations are larger, but ethnic balances are fragile and can be distorted if migration is large and persistent. The element of uncertainty in this contributes to this. If it was just for 5 years or so the resistance to it would be negligent, but we know from experience we will likely never get rid of them again so it takes on the character of forced immigration, which is of course perceived as a threat and fundamentally undemocratic, since the people in the host country never got to approve a changed population, or whether they thought that was a good idea.

You want your own norms to be universal, but that is unrealistic. You should respect the basic foundation of other nations. History is filled with people that ended up losing control with the land of their ancestors. It might be difficult to understand if you belong to a large and numerous group, but that is not the case for many peoples in Europe. This always gets trivialized and ridiculed, but say California had been an ethnically defined country in 1965 and experienced the same immigration as IRL making an immigrant group a plurality and the former majority population a minority. With the population growth in the Middle East and Africa that is not an unrealistic development in Europe and therefore many say: we already have large minorities and might as well say no now to prevent the demographic change from getting out of hand.

It is simply not true that a country that refuse to take refugees - or refuse to settle them permanently - persecute them. They refuse to help them in a specific way (but is often willing to help them in other ways and places). That is exactly that, refusing help, the persecutors are the groups in their homeland that drove them to flee, not the people saying "you will have to go elsewhere". No one are obliged to share their country with people they don't want to share it with, just as you are not obliged to share your house with foreigners just because they are homeless. You are doing a good deed if you take them in, but not doing good deeds is not equal to persecution.

[politicus]

The refugees’ path to Europe marked by new threat: land mines

It's possible, but still the chances for anyone to be killed by landmines in Croatia are small:

Most migrants are travelling near/or on roads and those roads and the spaces nearby have almost 100% been cleared of mines during the road construction process. Many are also travelling by bus or train.

And if 30.000 already made it into Croatia safely, there's no need to think landmines would be a greater threat than say a far-right winger running amok and killing some of them.

If they are trying to avoid police/army they will no longer travel along roads. So this will become a problem if a HDZ government shuts the borders down and people try alternative routes.

[politicus]

EU has agreed to share the 120,000 refugees. Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Romania voted against it, but it is approved by a qualified majority.
Slovakian PM premierminister Robert Fico says that his country refuses to accept the quotas and is prepared to break EU-rules and face the consequences.

"As long as I am PM mandatory quotas will not be implemented on Slovak territory"

Czech President Milos Zeman: "Only the future will show exactly how big a mistake this agreement was"

Poland had announced they would vote no, but ended up supporting it (giveaway to PiS, but the German pressure was hard), while Finland abstained.  

It is very unusual for EU make decisions regarding national sovereignty without unilateral consent, but obviously also unusual circumstances.

[politicus]

This vote confirms my belief that Slovakia won't accept to be the backdoor to EU after Hungary and Croatia close their borders (assuming a HDZ win in Croatia). Fico remains a hardliner on this issue despite not being on the right wing (Zeman too for that matter).

[politicus]

This vote confirms my belief that Slovakia won't accept to be the backdoor to EU after Hungary and Croatia close their borders (assuming a HDZ win in Croatia). Fico remains a hardliner on this issue despite not being on the right wing (Zeman too for that matter).

It is a very Fico thing to do though - he knows how to play the left-wing nationalist card, and sometimes gets ahead of himself and says stuff like "Slovakia was Not established for the minorities!" (I honestly get a Trump vibe from him)

Yes anything else had been surprising and could have undermined Smers dominant position, but the German pressure was intense.

Robert Fico:

"Every decent person from the world is welcome to Slovakia, but should respect the environment, values and rules, which are dominant in Slovakia. Given that Slovakia is a country where the Catholic church dominates, and the second largest is the Lutheran church, then perhaps we could not easily tolerate that 300 or 400,000 arriving Muslims would start building mosques and changing the nature, culture and values of the state"

[politicus]

EU prepared to essentially pay Greece to cede border control to the union.

http://www.tovima.gr/en/article/?aid=739590

Financial aid in return for accepting supervision of the country’s borders  from Frontex.

(Wonder if ANEL can accept that.. would fit many of their old conspiracy theories.)

Cross posted from the Greece thread.

[politicus]

Centre-right parties like ÖVP and NEOS voting for this is really strange. Especially NEOS, which is outside the "united parties" establishment.

[politicus]

Analysts expect PiS to renege on the 7,000 refugee quota that Poland has agreed to take after they win. Which could undermine the whole deal.

As the next PM of Poland says:

"EU’s decision is a scandal. It was approved in violation of our national security and without the support of the Polish people"

- Beata Szydlo

[politicus]

The EU deal will only encompass 66,000 refugees, not 120,000. The remaining 54,000 should have come from Hungary, but since the Hungarians won't accept a quota system on principle, this share will be postponed and distributed in a year from Italy and Greece.

The 66,000 will be 15.600 from Italy and 50.400 from Greece.

Denmark and Ireland are outside the agreement, but will voluntarily (well, officially..) take some later.
UK, Norway and Switzerland are outside the agreement, but are prepared to join in, no numbers have been specified for them yet:

Receipients in rounded numbers:

Finlan 1,300
Sweden 2,400
Germany 17,000
Netherlands 3,900
Belgium 2,500
Luxembourg 200
France 13,000
Spain 8,100
Portugal 1,600
Bulgaria 900
Romania 2,500
Croatia 600
Slovenia 300
Hungary 1,300
Austria 1,900
Slovakia 800 (# but refuse to take any)
Czech republic 1,600
Poland 5,100
Lithuania 400
Latvia 300
Estonia 200

Hungary declining to get any help, while having to take 1,300 as a quota from Greece and Italy is bizarre. F

[politicus]

Cyprus and Malta not taking any, I see.

Cyprus 147 and Malta 71. Forgot about them, such small numbers.

The three EU countries outside the agreement have offered to take:

UK 20,000
Ireland 4,000
Denmark 1,000

In addition to those that arrive by themselves (but that will be a low number for UK and Ireland).

No specific offers from Norway and Switzerland yet. Iceland will take theirs directly from camps in Lebanon and not join the EU led distribution.

[politicus]

On the new refugee routes and land mine risk in Croatia:

http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/croatia-landmines-pose-new-threat-to-refugees-09-24-2015

[politicus]

Apparently German officials are now worried that the next big wave of migrants will come from Afghanistan (with the country sustaining a monthly exodus of 100,000 people). http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article146898033/Neue-Fluechtlingswelle-aus-Afghanistan-befuerchtet.html

What are the trafficker routes from Afghanistan to Europe? Just via Iran, or something more complex?

[politicus]

After a weekend of extensive rioting and showdown in several German asylum centers Germany now starts debating dividing Muslims and Christians in separate camps.

Many of the fights is about religion, and the deputy chairman for the German police union Jörg Radek says it makes sense to divide people by their religion:

- "We must do everything to prevent further outbreaks of violence. And separate accommodation for religion, I think makes sense"

A poll now shows half of Germans are worried about the influx of refugees.

http://www.welt.de/videos/article146937308/Konflikte-werden-hier-weitergehen-und-hier-ausgetragen.html

http://www.dpa-international.com/news/international/analysisgerman-attitudes-towards-refugees-turn-more-soberby-andrew-mccathie-dpa-a-46783719.html

[politicus]

Not going well in Germany:

The last few weeks German media have repeatedly described how refugees and migrants have waged large mass brawl, using batons, knives and homemade weapons. On several occasions, hundreds have participated in the violent clashes.

Rainer Wendt, chairman of the German police union:

- When groups are beating up each other at night, all those who stood at the train station in Munich and applauded when the refugees arrived are asleep. But police officers are awake and in the midst of it all

He says its not a new development, but has been going on for weeks and months and describes how the groups structure themselves according to ethnic, religious or clan and family relationships in what he calls tough criminal structures.

It is particularly Christians among the refugees who need special protection and in particular single women and children.

- This includes sexual assault and rape. But we are far from a complete overview of the problems, because women and children are often afraid to report to the police.

Violent incidents most often originate among Muslim groups:

- Here Sunnis are fighting against Shiites and there is also the Salafists who are trying to control the religious agenda.

German newspaper Die Welt describes how fanatical Salafists want to usurp power in several refugee reception centers.

TV station Bayerischer Rundfunk has interview a Christian family coming from Iraq, who told they were placed in a camp where Islamists among other things, had threatened the family with the words "We will kill you and drink your blood"

The estimate for how many refugees Germany will receive this year has been increased from 800,000  to 1 mio. and thats only the figure for this year. No one among the Germany authorities have dared to speculate how many that will arrive next year, or at least say so out loud.

At the same time the German authorities estimate that at least every third migrant don't come from Syria, but other countries.

German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere:

- There are people who claim to come from Syria, but did not speak one word of Arabic. Yet have Syrian documents and passports.

[politicus]

Iranian-Kurdish economist Tino Sanandaji from Stockholm Business School challenges the idea that taking refugees makes Sweden wealthy. He believes that Swedish politicians and media promote a myth that integration is going well and that the Syrian immigrants are highly educated and make Sweden richer, although the opposite is true.

Himself a refugee (his family fled to Sweden when he was nine) Sanandaji has a PhD in public policy from the University of Chicago, and he conducts research in economics at Stockholm Business School.

Tino Sanandaji is also one of the most outspoken critics of the current Swedish immigration policy, which he believes both politicians and the media give a false picture of. According to Sanandaji this policy will lead to both economic and social decay. There are some interviews with him in The Economist and on Al Jazeera and his blog is on www.tino.us

Points:

1) The current refugee figures are the new normal, which is more likely to rise than fall. The increased flow primarily reflects the generous rules in Sweden and a diffuse border. To argue that this is due to a unique or transient event in Syria is childish - 70% of the asylum seekers to Sweden are not from Syria. Because it has become much easier to come to Sweden and similar countries, each new conflict will lead to more asylum seekers.

2) UNHCR has called the new figures for asylum influx globally for the 'new normal'. The number of asylum seekers which came to Sweden in one week in September was 7,000. By comparison there came 19,000 in the whole of 1994, which internationally saw almost as many refugees as today.

3) Labour market participation among Swedes of working age is about 85%. For immigrants from countries outside Europe the figure is 52%, and it has been so the past fifteen years. Without work it is very difficult to integrate and impossible to contribute financially to society.

4) Sanandaji completely disagrees with the Swedish debaters that highlight immigration as an economic advantage for Sweden because of the country's demographic development and aging and calls it a myth.

"Immigration can compensate for an aging population on the condition that a sufficient number of migrants are actually working and paying taxes. But not if many in the group do not work and live on public assistance. So, to accept young people, many of whom are unemployed, do not compensate for an aging population; it only exacerbates the situation".

5) In Sweden the integration is so bad that refugee migration represents a huge and growing financial burden to be financed on top of the aging population. Not a single study, based on calculations of the actual income and expenditure, has shown otherwise.

6) The claim that Sweden needs immigration for demographic reasons is something that politicians have come up with in order to convince voters and isn't supported by economic research.

7) It is very difficult for low skilled or unskilled immigrants find work in Sweden, and many of the immigrants coming now are poorly educated. The only solution is education, which is notoriously extremely difficult in adulthood. Sweden has made great efforts to solve these problems over 20-30 years, but the numbers just look worse and worse.

8 ) The technological development that eliminates more and more unskilled jobs makes integration more difficult each passing year.

9) If Sweden maintains the current immigration policy the consequences are extremely serious. Gradual economic and social decay, so the rest of Sweden will develop in the direction of Malmö with extremely high social exclusion, inequality and social problems.

10) Immigrants now account for 16% of Sweden's population, but 55% of the long-term unemployed, and they receive 60% of the total welfare benefits. On average immigrants pay 40% less in taxes than ethnic Swedes despite a demographic advantage. As the group of immigrants grows, the tax base will steadily become smaller and smaller.

Also says that while ethnic Swedish colleagues agree with his analysis they are afraid to say so because of negative career consequences.

Whichever way you view the refugee debate you shouldn't succumb to the idiotic idea that "aging Europe" needs immigration. Integration costs a fortune and it rarely works well enough to pay off. Especially Nordic welfare states are not set up to receive mass immigration. We would basically have to dismantle all our social systems and switch to something much more neo-liberal to make it work, and even then it is doubtful if it would be a net benefit.

Generating wealth in the well functioning societies in the West and using a part of it to help as many refugees as possible in the areas where they come from is the rational solution. Undermining our economy and social model by letting them come here is irrational. We have been too selfish on this, but the solution isn't to accept mass migration of low skilled and culturally alien people, it is to create safe zones and help refugees where they are.

It is of course ironic that a highly skilled guy with refugee background tells us this, but when it comes to migration it is important to remain rational and look at the average and do the numbers, not look at the individual sunshine stories - and avoid false comparisons between societies with very different cultural and socioeconomic structures. What works in the US or Australia, won't necessarily work in Germany or Sweden.

[politicus]

64% of Germans approve of Schäuble? That's the scariest number.

Why wouldn't they? He is only enacting traditional mainstream German beliefs about economics.

[politicus]

An internal Austrian report states that the large and continuing flow of refugees that over the past several months have arrived in Europe could result in a number of serious risk scenarios.

The report is entitled 'Sonderberichterstattung und Analyse der derzeitigen Migrationslage' - 'Special report and analysis of the current migration situation'.

The report concludes, that as a result of the situation in Austria the police may be overburdened and that there is a threat to the maintenance of public order.

In addition, there is the danger that the asylum and supply system can be overstretched, just as there is a risk of inter-religious and inter-ethnic conflicts breaking out among migrants.

'There is a danger that the judicial and legal structures could be put out of force'

The report was really only for internal use, but several Austrian media have gotten hold of it anyway.

First, excerpts has been brought on Austrian TV, and then the full text in Krone Zeitung.

Krone Zetiung subsequently put the report on the net.

http://de.scribd.com/doc/282572361/Sonderberichterstattung-und-Analyse-der-derzeitigen-Migrationslage

The authorities initially denied the existence of the report, due to its politically explosive content.

[politicus]

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Police reports that there has been no noticable increase in the crime rate due to the recent influx of refugees, pointing out that rumours about refugee-related crimes are often fabricated and spread on the Internet. Occasional brawls between asylum seekers are described as largely being "under control".

At the same time, they also report that "politically motivated felonies" against asylum-seeker homes have increased by 200% (compared to 2014).

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/Polizei-widerspricht-Geruechten-um-Fluechtlingskriminalitaet,fluechtlinge4178.html

I think at least internationally the impression of high crime rates and big brawls are based on interviews with German police officers and police union reps more than internet rumors or individual "stories".

[politicus]

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Police reports that there has been no noticable increase in the crime rate due to the recent influx of refugees, pointing out that rumours about refugee-related crimes are often fabricated and spread on the Internet. Occasional brawls between asylum seekers are described as largely being "under control".

At the same time, they also report that "politically motivated felonies" against asylum-seeker homes have increased by 200% (compared to 2014).

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/Polizei-widerspricht-Geruechten-um-Fluechtlingskriminalitaet,fluechtlinge4178.html

I think at least internationally the impression of high crime rates and big brawls are based on interviews with German police officers and police union reps more than internet rumors or individual "stories".

So?

Well, firstly it means that this will be less relevant in changing the narrative about the situation and secondly that there seems to be a discrepancy between what official statistics say and what policemen  experience. It could also be that the ones being interviewed are disproportionally right wingers, but I am somewhat skeptical about that (although some are). On that topic Rainer Wendt from Deutsche Polizeigewerkschaft seems to have right wing contacts (though New Right, not far-right). Do you know more about his political connections?

As I understand it crimes against other asylum seekers inside the camps is the big problem with sexual assaults on women and children, violence and threats against minorities/rival groups etc, various forms of exploitation and extortion. Most of it going unreported. Not so much crimes against Germans.

[politicus]

In an opinion piece in Der Spiegel SPD chairman Sigmar Gabriel and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier say that Germany can not "permanently absorbe and integrate more than a mio. refugees" and needs to take steps to reduce the incoming numbers.

[politicus]

Mecklenburg-Vorpommern State Police reports that there has been no noticable increase in the crime rate due to the recent influx of refugees, pointing out that rumours about refugee-related crimes are often fabricated and spread on the Internet. Occasional brawls between asylum seekers are described as largely being "under control".

At the same time, they also report that "politically motivated felonies" against asylum-seeker homes have increased by 200% (compared to 2014).

https://www.ndr.de/nachrichten/mecklenburg-vorpommern/Polizei-widerspricht-Geruechten-um-Fluechtlingskriminalitaet,fluechtlinge4178.html

I think at least internationally the impression of high crime rates and big brawls are based on interviews with German police officers and police union reps more than internet rumors or individual "stories".

So?

Well, firstly it means that this will be less relevant in changing the narrative about the situation and secondly that there seems to be a discrepancy between what official statistics say and what policemen  experience. It could also be that the ones being interviewed are disproportionally right wingers, but I am somewhat skeptical about that (although some are). On that topic Rainer Wendt from Deutsche Polizeigewerkschaft seems to have right wing contacts (though New Right, not far-right). Do you know more about his political connections?

As I understand it crimes against other asylum seekers inside the camps is the big problem with sexual assaults on women and children, violence and threats against minorities/rival groups etc, various forms of exploitation and extortion. Most of it going unreported. Not so much crimes against Germans.

I would still treat interviews with policemen as anecdotal evidence. You say you doubt that the interviewed policemen are disproportionally right wingers. What's your basis for that statement?

Rainer Wendt is a CDU member and one from the party's right wing it seems. I guess he has a lot of beef with his party chairwoman right now, but that's his problem. Today the police union criticized yesterday's episode of the popular Tatort police procedural show which was basically a fictionalized version of a real-life case of a refugee burning to death in a police cell back in 2005. I guess they can't stand negative portrayals of the police in TV shows either...

I'm aware of the reports regarding sexual reassaults in asylum seeker homes, but given that any negative refugee-related reports seem to get blown way out of proportion I'm not sure what to do with that information.

Thanks for the info on Wendt. How does German policemen generally vote? (high SocDem share here, but I would expect German police officers to be more right wing - but that may be a prejudice).

Saying that the interviewed policemen are disproportionally right wingers just seems like an easy excuse to dismiss what they are saying, that is all. Given that conditions are terrible in refugee camps in the Middle East and Africa it seems most plausible that many of the problems are the same in the European countries that take the most, even with our lower numbers we have lots of harassment of gays, women, Christians and "heretics" as well.

I guess it depends what you are most skeptical about: statistics or opinions from people "on the ground". When it comes to crime I am deeply suspicious of official statistics (except for murder and very severe violence), especially when relating to vulnerable groups with a high incentive not to report . But of course you need a fairly large and broad based sample of anecdotal evidence to get closer to the truth than the statistics.

[politicus]

The Sweden Democrats will now post "scare adds" in Turkish, Jordanian and Lebanese media to dissuade refugees from coming to Sweden. So they keep copy-catting the Danish right wing.

Meanwhile Moderate leader Anna Kinberg Batra has demanded immediate reinstatement of border controls in Schengen (temporarily during the crisis).

- "It is time that the government takes responsibility for the situation. It is an extreme situation that we see being worsened by the day. We must get a handle on who is coming here"

The Moderates have their party convention now and polls show they are losing voters to both Centre and SD over this - a liberal segment with youngish well-educated women over represented is going to Centre and a right wing with 60+ men as a core group is going to SD, so a bit of a dilemma for them.

[politicus]

The details and the financing is still not 100% in place, but the main elements in the EU-Turkey refugee agreement are:


EU gives:

- Speeding up visa liberalization for Turkish businessmen and students.

- Reopening various areas of the accession negotiations with Turkey (energy, EMU, human and political rights)

- Turkish politicians should be invited to future EU summits, which hasn't happened since 2006.

- A ca. 3 billion Euro contribution to handling refugees in Turkey.


EU gains:

- Turkey steps up border control and control of the Turkish coastline

- Readmission of migrants who have come into the EU from Turkey, but don't qualify for asylum.

- Opening of the Turkish labour market and educational system for Syrian refugees.

- Better protection of the refugees' basic rights in Turkey.


All sorts of problems lie ahead, but at least generally a positive development.