MOSCOW, May 29. /TASS/. The mass inflow of migrants adds problems to the European Union, which is confronted with new challenges that require years and huge funds to overcome them, experts polled by TASS news agency said on Friday.
The European Commission (EC) made public on Wednesday the details of its plan for resolving the problem of an inflow of migrants from North Africa and the Middle East.
The plan suggests resettling 40,000 refugees who land in Greece and Italy to other European countries in the next two years. Under the plan, Germany, France and Spain should bear the largest burden for accepting the migrants. The UK government has immediately refused to take part in such a system.
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Denmark, Estonia, France and Spain also spoke against this initiative.
The countries taking in migrants will receive 6,000 euros of financial aid from Brussels for each person relocated on their territory. Overall, the EC has suggested allocating 833 million euros next year for resolving the EU’s migration problems. Simultaneously, the EU plans to carry out a military operation in the Mediterranean Sea for destroying boats smuggling migrants to Europe.
"Previously, Europe was also confronted with the problem of migrants’ adaption but the current influx of refugees prompted by conflicts in North Africa and the Middle East caused a real panic in the European Union," Deputy Head of the World Policy and World Economy Faculty at the Higher School of Economics Andrei Suzdaltsev said.
"Last year alone, 627,000 persons filed requests for asylum in EU countries. That is why, the plan to receive 40,000 refugees in Europe in the next two years will not resolve the problem. Thus, Estonia, which should take in several thousand migrants under the EC’s resettlement quota, considers this decision as disastrous. The migration challenge as a whole may explode the EU," the expert said.
Illegal migration is Europe’s most difficult problem, said Nadezhda Arbatova, head of the Department for European Political Studies at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
"Refugee flows into Europe have acquired unprecedented dimensions and actually this is already the great transmigration of peoples. Until now, the European political correctness did not allow Europe to openly discuss this challenge: the EU leaders were afraid they might be accused of racism. As a result, openly nationalist parties are coming to the front of the political scene in some countries," she said.
‘Various EU countries have different approaches to the solution of the illegal migration problem. Southern Europe - Italy, Greece and Malta - welcome the introduction of quotas for migrant resettlement because these countries bear the largest migration burden," the expert said.
"The UK advocates the principle: ‘what is illegal is unlawful. But Europeans have so far failed to come to the conclusion that the problem has to be resolved not inside the EU but at distant approaches, in the struggle against the Islamic State and in the efforts to improve living conditions in the poorest countries of North Africa and the Middle East, including at the expense of the region’s richest countries," the expert said.
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