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REFUGEES: EUROPE SITS ON ITS HANDS IN RESPONSE TO THE TRAGEDY
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granted for Turkish citizens wishing to travel to
the EU, flies in the face of reports issued by in-
ternational organisations denouncing the utter
lack of guarantees regarding compliance and
Turkey’s poor track record on human rights.
In its rush to identify the “secure countries”
essential to this strategy, the EU is introducing
an entirely new level of risk into an already com-
plicated equation: many of the countries on its
list do not respect human rights.
We are now being told of the need to help
finance refugee relief efforts in countries bor-
dering or close to Syria such as Jordan, Lebanon
and Libya that up to the present have been pro-
viding basic support for 86 % of the regional
refugee population with limited assistance. The
underlying strategy never openly expressed in
this discourse is nevertheless clear: helping
these countries bear the burden of maintaining
these refugees is one way of avoiding that they
will try to make their way to Europe.
Asylum in Europe and Spain –the figures
are painful
More than one million desperate people crossed
the Mediterranean during 2015 in search of a
safe place to rebuild their lives. According to
Eurostat, more than 800,000 asylum applica-
tions were filed in the EU last year. Of the peo-
ple named in these documents, approximately
215,000 (almost one third) are minors.
Spain’s commitment to refugees has always
been somewhat tepid. Of the mere 195,000 peo-
ple who filed applications in Spain between 1984
and the present, less than 50 % have received
asylum. By way of comparison, Germany received
more applications in the space of a single year
even before the outset of the refugee crisis, regis-
tering 220,000 requests for 2014 alone.
The unofficial figure for asylum applications
presented in Spain during 2015 stands at ap-
proximately 16,000.