When you sit where I am sitting here in Lesvos, you may become a bit cynical with Europe’s inaction on the refugee issue. A fire ripped through the Moria camp on Lesvos[1] on the night of 8 September, effectively destroying 80-90% of the facility and the adjoining olive groves where 12,500 asylum seekers were staying. The whole population is now displaced and emergency solutions are sought.
The immediate reaction of the European Union has been words of support towards the Greek government. The European Union (EU) Commissioner for Home Affairs immediately announced the funding for transfer of unaccompanied minors to the Greek mainland. This recipe has been used in the past: shifting people from the islands to the mainland keeps the problem in Greece. It doesn’t address the fact that this country – which was facing an unprecedented economic crisis before the refugee influx of 2015, before the current health crisis of COVID-19 and before Turkey’s aggressive behaviour towards it – carries the burden on behalf of the EU for the vast majority of arrivals from Turkey, the other being Cyprus.
The German state of North Rhine-Westphalia committed to taking 1,000 asylum seekers from Moria. Again, this is a recipe already tried. Such commitments are of course welcome but usually take months to materialize and are ad hoc, depending on the receiving state’s politics and interest. Another disaster has to happen for another round of commitments to be made.
