Refugees’ routes

Mirosław Piotrowski

The target, certainly, is Germany. In order to get there, arrivers from Northern Africa and Near East are getting to Romania and Bulgaria from Turkey through the Black Sea. Being paid for it, smugglers pack them to sealed vans and then through Hungary, Slovakia and Poland they are smuggled to Germany. German newspapers note the lack of scrupulous thinking of smugglers, who abandon the exhausted smuggled refugees just behind the Polish border. The problem is that the Germans withdrew their police divisions from Brandenburg some time ago, moving them onto the south of Germany.

This whole situation is like pouring water out of a boat full of holes. The decision of chancellor Angela Merkel from Autumn 2015 about opening borders encouraged emigration. At present, just after the election, the chancellor is in trouble for this reason. It is probable that in Bundestag a special investigation commission will be set up in relation to the ‘refugee policy of Merkel’, which was envisaged by the liberal party FDP and the anti-immigration party AfD, and the extremely leftist party Die Linke joined in. Support of the one-fourth of Bundestag is necessary to establish it. The FDP, demanding such a commission, is supposed to become a governmental ally of Merkel, which will additionally enrich the political life of Germany.

The issue of refugees was also the main subject of the conflict between the party of Angela Merkel CDU and the sister party of Horst Seehofer CSU. The latter one managed to soften Merkel’s attitude, who had not wanted to hear about deciding about a maximum number of permitted refugees. As a result of the pressure from the CSU, a compromise was made, which defined the maximum annual limit on refugees in the number of 200 thousand. It concerns people escaping from the war, but not applying for asylum. Following this information the president of France Emmanuel Macron announced that his country with the agreement with the UNO, would permit 10 thousand refugees to arrive at his country during two years. It is much less than Germany but still. The annual contingent defined by German Christian Democrats intends to stop the enormous wave of immigrants. The number defined by Germany is nearly10 percent of people who arrived at Europe during two years. The authorities of this country assume that their decision will discourage immigrants preparing for their journey. However, it cannot be denied that they will treat this decision as a motto ‘who the first, the better’ and will accelerate the arrival, with the intention to be the first in the defined contingent, and then one can expect a crisis on the refugees’ routes, and undoubtedly, we will also find out about the new ones soon.

(AA)

„Niedziela” 43/2017

Editor: Tygodnik Katolicki "Niedziela", ul. 3 Maja 12, 42-200 Czestochowa, Polska
Editor-in-chief: Fr Jaroslaw Grabowski • E-mail: redakcja@niedziela.pl