Courtesy of The Automatic Earth.
Arnold Genthe 17th century Iglesia el Carmen, Antigua, Guatemala 1915
This from the Financial Times is too much. Europe has no morals left. None.
“It creates an opportunity…” Yeah.
It’s being discussed as if this is entirely normal. The new low is very low.
Europe Debates Migrant Quota Buyout Plan
European Commission officials are debating a proposal that would allow some EU countries to pay money in order to opt out of a mandatory quota system for accepting refugees, in a plan that could ease a stand-off between eastern and western members over how to relieve Europe’s migrant crisis. Some eastern states have balked at being forced to accept mandatory numbers, under a plan to divide 160,000 migrants across the region to be announced on Wednesday by commission president Jean-Claude Juncker. They argue that voluntary targets allow member states to provide better care to people looking to settle in Europe. “We are ready to share the burden and take responsibility, but only if we have control over the situation,” said Poland’s minister for Europe, Rafal Trzaskowski.
Over the summer a harrowing exodus of people from the Middle East, Africa and Afghanistan has leapt to the top of Europe’s political agenda, and led to a quadrupling of the EU’s resettlement target from 40,000 people in July. Commission officials and eastern diplomats stressed that the plan would only allow countries to take temporary “time-outs” from any expanded quota regime, in exchange for payments to a fund supporting refugees. “It creates an opportunity for voluntary decision making,” said an eastern EU official. “If they do it with penalties, then that is a bad idea. But if there is a system where you contribute financially to helping the problem in a different way, then that is much more palatable.”EU officials stressed that any opt-out would also have to be justified by “objective reasons” — for example Poland’s desire to have contingency plans in place to accept large numbers of refugees from Ukraine if the conflict there worsens.
