Belgium has called for vast refugee camps holding up to 300,000 refugees to be built in Greece in a desperate attempt to stem the flow of migrants from Syria and other nations outside Europe. At an emergency summit of European leaders yesterday, Belgian migration minister Theo Francken raised the spectre of setting up ‘closed facilities’ in Greece to be operated by the EU. He said that the Greeks ‘now need to bear the consequences’ of being too weak to guard their own borders and called for Athens to face an EU ‘sanction mechanism’ under which the rising number of refugees entering the country would be forced to stay there.
It comes as Theresa May tore into Brussels for being ‘more talk than action’ as plans were belatedly unveiled to try to solve the migration crisis. At the summit, EU leaders announced teams of border guards will be deployed to stop migrants leaving Greece for the rest of the EU, cutting the country off from the rest of the continent. The scheme – which effectively suspends Greece’s membership of the Schengen zone – is designed to finally halt the free flow of migrants arriving by boat into mainland Europe. CONTINUE
