THE European Union has yet to declare how many refugees it will welcome from Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover – as the UK sets out its global credentials by accepting 20,000.
Its member states are holding off on announcing how many Afghan asylum seekers they will offer shelter to amid fears of a new migrant crisis. This leaves the bloc flagging behind its international partners, who have already declared they will regime huge numbers of refugees from Afghanistan. The UK has already vowed to take in 20,000 vulnerable Afghans threatened by the Taliban.
In recent days, Slovenian prime minister Janez Jansa insisted that the EU should not open its doors to Afghan migrants.
“The EU will not open any European migration corridors for Afghanistan,” he fumed.
Mr Jansa’s intervention is crucial because he currently holds the EU’s six-month rotating presidency.
It means Slovenian ministers and officials are in charge of the inter-governmental negotiations in Brussels because EU member states.
He said there could not be a repeat of the “strategic mistake” of the 2015 migrant crisis, when the EU introduced a mandatory migrant resettlement scheme despite huge opposition from Hungary and Poland.
European Parliament President David Sassoli quickly lashed out at the Slovenian leader in what soon became a bitter Twitter clash.
Source: The express