With a view to the harsh rejection of refugees from the Belarusian border, the EU Commission is countering criticism that Europe is sealing itself off from asylum seekers.
Since 2015, “more than 840,000 people under the responsibility of EU Frontex operations have been rescued” and brought to European coasts, the Brussels authority told the newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
In the current year, according to the Commission, “more than 35,000 people have been rescued under Frontex responsibility;
45 percent of them in the central Mediterranean, 40 percent on the Atlantic route via the Canary Islands, 13 percent on the western Mediterranean route to Spain and two percent on the eastern route "to Greece.
Crisis meeting with EU representatives
Representatives of France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands and the EU Commission will meet on Sunday in Calais in northern France to discuss the refugee crisis on the English Channel. The aim of the consultations is to improve police, legal and humanitarian cooperation and to take more decisive action against people smugglers. France had invited to the meeting after the death of 27 refugees on Wednesday. Originally, the British Interior Minister Priti Patel was also supposed to take part, but she was unloaded again by her French colleague Gérald Darmanin in the increasing dispute over the refugee crisis.
Before the consultations began, aid organizations had demanded decisive measures to create legal migration routes.
"If the government blames people smugglers (for risky escape routes), it is concealing its own responsibility," said the chairman of the French organization "L'Auberge des migrants", François Guennoc, the AFP news agency.
"If there were legal routes to Britain, there would be no people smugglers."
Juliette Delaplace from the local Catholic refugee agency said: "I fear that the answer will only be repressive and security-related." “Promote.