Europe can't lose face on migrants

(ANSA) - Rome, September 3 - Europe cannot lose face on the huge migrant and refugee emergency facing it, Italian Premier Matteo Renzi said Thursday, stressing the need to save all even if they cannot all be received indiscriminately.
    The Italian premier said a widely published photo of a two-year-old Syrian refugee who died with his brother and mother on a Turkish beach must spur further concerted action.
    Renzi was speaking as France and Germany agreed joint initiatives including permanent and compulsory quotas; trains were again swamped in Budapest; and the EU said some 160,000 refugees now had to be redistributed, with countries not taking part facing sanctions.
    Europe is facing unprecedented arrivals of migrants fleeing conflict in countries such as Syria, with more than 350,000 people reaching the continent so far this year, according to figures from the International Organization for Migration.
    The route from Libya to Italy is one of the most commonly taken by those trying to enter Europe.
    But the boy whose photo has spurred a wave of sympathy and outrage was found near Bodrum in Turkey.
    Renzi said the photo "grips the heart and assails the soul.
    I say that as a father before being a prime minister." He added, at a press conference with Maltese Premier Joseph Muscat: "Europe cannot lose face". The photo has raised sympathy for refugees and spurred calls for greater action to stop deaths in the Mediterranean.
    Renzi said that "we must recover a European ideal which is not that of receiving everyone indiscriminately, because it isn't possible, but trying to save everyone, and that is a duty". Renzi went on that "it is Europe's duty to give a united response, one that starts with European asylum rights, with EU initiatives on reception and management of the (migrant) emergency, with EU repatriation, but also with a global strategy that holds together fundamental intervention to be made in countries of origin".
    The migrant influx "is not only an emergency, it will continue for a long time," Renzi said. "Weeks and months will be needed and a global European approach is required," he said.
    Italian ships have saved 115,544 people in the Mediterranean, Renzi said. The island of Lampedusa south of Sicily was the leading landing point for the migrants and refugees, he said, followed by various Sicilian ports.
    The European Commission is looking at the possibility of countries opting out of a permanent mechanism for intra-EU migrant resettlement, but with sanctions, EU sources said.
    The Commission will also contact Praque authorities for information on what is happening after the publication of photos of migrants 'branded' on the arms with marker pens by the police, immigration and internal affairs spokesperson Natasha Bertaud said Thursday.
    The European Commission plans to propose 120,000 intra-EU migrant resettlements on top of the 40,000 already planned for Italy and Greece, including Hungary, EU sources told ANSA. Italy has been pressing its partners to agree to take in more migrants amid the emergency in the Mediterranean in which thousands of desperate people are fleeing to Europe.
    Also Thursday, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said she hopes the EU can enter a "new phase" in the immigration debate, as the crisis surrounding responsibility and management of a growing influx of migrants to European shores continues to escalate.
    "I hope by now there's a shared consciousness among all 28 (member states); it's not possible to postpone action that's urgent and has to be common to all 28 member states," Mogherini said upon arrival at an informal meeting of Defence Ministers in Luxembourg.
    Mogherini said she spent Wednesday working with European Commission President Juncker and the rest of the Commission "on our new package to face the refugee crisis and the migration crisis that Europe is facing".
    Meanwhile Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said the EU is "incapable of managing the situation" of immigration in Europe, following a meeting with European Parliament President Martin Schulz. A public announcement on Thursday at Budapest's main train station told passengers that international trains to Western Europe are suspended "indefinitely", the BBC said. This came following a two-day stand-off in Budapest, where unregistered asylum seekers camped in front of the station that closed its doors to them.
    Orban, who has put up a fence on Hungary's border with Serbia, said EU immigration "isn't a European problem, it's a German problem".
    "Everyone wants to go to Germany. No one wants to stay in Hungary, Slovakia, or Estonia," Orban said.
    German Chancellor Angela Merkel replied to Orban's criticism of Berlin's refugee policy by saying "Germany is doing what is juridically and morally required. No more, no less".