Refugee camps outside EU

In a bizarre version of the offshore tax haven, Germany has revived the idea of camps for refugees heading for Europe to be set up outside the territory of the Union.

The suggestion originally came from Britain last year but was alleged by the United Nations to be illegal. Describing the camps as “safe zones”, Germany’s interior minister, Otto Schilly, said such centres would enable ships containing refugees to be diverted before they reached the shores of the European Union.

A commission spokesman was quick to pass the parcel to the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, whose area of responsibility he claimed it was. Diedrik Kramer, spokesman for the UNCHR, said that the main objection was that the members of the EU have signed the Geneva Convention that binds them to offer asylum, “so it would be a very bad example if European countries started saying ‘Well, we won’t apply the convention in our part of the world. Let’s have that done in another part of the world’.”

It is difficult to imagine this scheme ever being put into effect and it is probably an opening shot in a campaign to review the European policy on immigration. It may also be aimed at German voters worried about immigration.

In their heart of hearts, the European Commission believes that immigration is a good thing because it will solve the problem of an ageing work force a great deal more easily and quickly than persuading the indigenous population to have more babies. This concept is highly debatable on a number of grounds.

However, the present situation, where virtually no legal immigration is allowed but at the same time hundreds of thousands of illegals arrive every year, is rapidly becoming untenable and clogging immigration controls.

Source: French News