Refugees arriving in Europe should be detained for up to 18 months in holding centres across the EU while they are screened for security and terrorism risks, the president of the European council has said.
Donald Tusk also put himself strongly at odds with Europe’s most powerful politician, Angela Merkel, by declaring that there was no majority among European governments for a binding quotas system to share refugees between them. The mandatory refugee-sharing regime is the German chancellor’s chief policy for dealing with the migration crisis, not least since about 1 million are expected to enter Germany this year.
In a lengthy interview with the Guardian and five other European newspapers, Tusk, the former Polish prime minister, described Merkel’s open-door policy on refugees as “dangerous” and derided data claiming that Syrian-war refugees made up a majority of those trying to get to Europe. Public confidence in governments’ ability to tackle the immigration crisis would only be restored by a stringent new system of controls on the EU’s external borders, he said.
Tusk’s remarks contradicted Berlin’s stance and also the asylum policies being drafted across the street from his Brussel’s office in the European commission.
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