OPINION: 'We are witnessing the same injustice as in 2018, when Italy closed ports to ships carrying refugees… The EU's interior ministers urgently need to sit down and have another talk about how to distribute asylum-seekers,' DW's RiegertBernd writes.
member states have been responding by turning a blind eye and making empty promises, all while invoking the ghost of European solidarity and"common solutions to common problems."has buckled under the pressure –– and not only of right-wing nationalist governments –– to increasingly discourage potential asylum-seekers from entering the EU and seal its borders.
The same can be observed in Greece, along the Balkan route, and in Spain. It's the only reasonable way to explain why Germany received more requests for asylum than other EU member states. Just like its southern neighbor Austria, Germany cannot be a first country of entry due to its geographical position. That's why member states keep trying to push migrants back to the first country of entry, to avoid responsibility as per the Dublin agreement. But this is only marginally successful.
The EU's interior ministers urgently need to sit down and have another talk about how to distribute asylum-seekers. Until they do, this inhumane game of refugee bingo, as some in Brussels have come to call it, will continue. Then, endless phone conferences will be held to try to find EU member states willing to take in a few of the migrants holding out in rescue vessels along Italy's ports. That's what happened in 2018, and in 2019, and yet again now — and it's a fiasco.