Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Friday continued a stepped up counterattack by practically all of Greek leadership this week in the face of opposition by certain EU countries to share the burden of refugee flows, referring to a “bomb on the foundations of the EU’s operation.”
Tsipras spoke from the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels, and three days after European Council president Donald Tusk said compulsory quotas amongst EU member-states for hosting refugees and asylum seekers arriving at the Union’s gates have been “ineffective” and “highly divisive”.
Tsipras said a letter by Tusk on the matter was “misguided” and that there can be no “a la carte Europe… There can’t be some that believe they have only rights without obligations,” he said.
The leftist Greek premier’s comments echoed a statement by EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos, who hails from Greece. The latter said Tusk’s proposals were “unacceptable” and “anti-European”.
More than a million people were ferried over to a handful of eastern Aegean isles at the height of the refugee/migrant crisis in 2015, after Tsipras’ leftist SYRIZA party rode to power in January 2015. A large portion of the Mideast war refugees that arrived on Greek territory by using people smugglers had first reached safety in nearby Turkey, before deciding to head to preferred destinations in western and northern Europe.
At the same time, various other third country nationals hailing from countries ranging from Morocco to Bangladesh took advantage of the crisis in order to illegally enter Greece and then attempt to also reach job markets in western Europe.
