Ela malaka! EU interior ministers please talk sense!
Some potentially bad and breathtakingly unfair news today, emerging from reports in Greek and other newspapers and on the broadcast news. Summed up by Greek Reporter as: “Europe is about to warn Greece that it has six weeks to stop migrants crossing from Turkey or it will be forced out of the Schengen zone for two years, says a London Times report.” I don’t think I am the only person who immediately sees the stupidity of this ruling, if indeed it is true. I am certainly not the only one to be outraged by it, though I am probably one of the few who doesn’t fully understand its political implications. I don’t go into all that, I simply look at the simple. And that ‘simple’ is: How?
Apart from anything else, apart from the fact that Greece is up to its meatballs in debt, its people are literally being crippled by pressures on services (hospital staff shortages, strikes etc.), apart from the pressure the government and country are already under to do the bidding of the EU, how on earth is anyone going to ‘secure the external borders’ when most of Greece’s border with Turkey looks like this:
It’s a bit ludicrous really when you think that Greece has 13,676 km of coastline and ranks 13th in the world in the table of longest coastline (2012). Not all of it is a border with Turkey of course, but a lot of what is, is simply made up of rocks and jagged rocks at that, and it’s all rather remote.
I wondered how the negotiations might go up at the EU headquarters when they sit down to talk to the Greeks about this issue.
EU: So, Greece, it’s now up to you to stop refugees and migrant workers, asylum seekers and immigrants coming through Turkey. If you don’t then we’ll take our Schengen toys away and then boot you out of the agreement that no country is supposed to be booted out of, or else the Union starts to fall apart. Okay?
GREECE: Ela malaka! I’ve not even finished my coffee yet.
EU: How are you going to pay for it?’
GREECE: I’ll put it on my tab as usual and consider paying for it later. Perhaps.
EU: No, the new border patrols, the boats, the communications, the medical supplies needed, the staff, the paperwork and the housing you will have to give to all the migrants (of various castes) who will start to fill up your nearly-third world country over the next two years. How are you going to stop migrant flow and pay for it?
GREECE. Pou na xeroume?
EU: Say what?
GREECE: Dunno.
EU: Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s your problem now, it’s your fault that you happen to border with Turkey at sea and a little on land, and it’s your fault that we are basically dumping this problem on your ancient doorstep. Deal with it.
GREECE: So, what do you suggest?
EU: We suggest that it’s not our problem. We’ll just block Greece off from the rest of Europe and expect you to deal with it. And, by the way, can we have our money back too?
GREECE: If you are going to be like that about it, we’ll just go back to the Drachma and invite others to do the same. Then we won’t owe you anything and we can keep the ‘donations’ you gave us to pay for the increase in population until the country descends into a riot and you have a border war to deal with. Sound okay with you?
And so it could go on. I can’t be the only one who thinks that this proposal, if it gets passed through whatever committees and groups it needs to be passed through, is at best unfair and at worst a annexing of a struggling country by more affluent countries and leaving it to struggle further. Apparently half a million displaced people arrived in Greece last year (according to the Express online) which represents around 4.5% of the 11m population of the country. Which means, in theory, that by the end of this year the country could have grown by 10% and that 10% is made up mainly of people fleeing a war Greece had nothing to do with. The country would then have to house, clothe and administer that extra one million. Unless it uses its “one of the biggest navies in Europe” (Austrian interior minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner) to repel borders at its coastal borders, the EU will do what it has been trying to stop happening and cut out one of its own union countries. That makes no sense either.
Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have something else to blog about. Something that doesn’t raise the blood pressure and make one want to bonk some safely removed and unaffected EU officials on their empty heads.
