Europe heads for refugee clash with euro plans pushed aside

Bloomberg

Spain and Italy are heading for a clash over migration as Rome hardened its tough stance on refugees and the new government in Madrid called for a humane approach to asylum-seekers.
Three years after a wave of immigrants fleeing wars and chaos in the Middle East and North Africa threatened to overwhelm the European Union, the issue is back at the top of the bloc’s agenda as right wing politicians in Italy and Germany tap into voters’ resurgent anger.
The refugee crisis is pushing aside a renewed drive for EU integration and looks set to compete with Brexit for attention at a summit of EU leaders next week.
Italy’s anti-immigrant firebrand Matteo Salvini, who also heads the interior ministry in a populist coalition government, refused to allow a rescue ship with more than 600 people aboard to dock in Sicily — with Spain stepping in to offer shelter. Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska said that the bloc needs to find a humane way to deal with immigrants that also offers protection to citizens.
“We can’t make this a choice between humanity and security,” Grande-Marlaska said on Spain’s broadcaster TVE. “Security and humanity together must be completely viable.”
German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who leads the Bavarian sister party of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, has given the chancellor a two-week ultimatum to secure an EU agreement that would return migrants to the countries in which they were first registered. If she fails to deliver, Seehofer has threatened to start turning away migrants at the German border in defiance of the chancellor.
Under the bloc’s Dublin Convention, refugees are supposed to apply for asylum in the first EU country they enter, though many push on to richer countries such as Germany.

EU may ‘limit’ migrant moves
Bloomberg

EU leaders may commit to measures limiting the movement of asylum-seekers between EU member states, in a statement which could appease rebels in German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government who have threatened to take unilateral action turning away migrants at the border.
“Concerning the situation internally in the EU, secondary movements of asylum seekers between Member States put the integrity of the Asylum System severely at risk,” the bloc’s heads of government will say in a joint statement next week, according to a draft of their summit conclusions.
“Member States should
take all necessary internal legislative and administrative measures to counter such movements and to closely cooperate amongst each other to this end,” according to the document, dated June 19.