Merkel's Eurozone Policy Redone for Southern Europe's Refugee Crisis

France is still taking in refugees after the Paris attacks. Despite calls by leaders across Europe to stop accepting refugees, President Hollande said France will keep its commitment to receive 30,000 in the next two years. Hollande said : "Some want to establish a link between the influx of refugees coming from the Middle-East and the terrorist threat. The truth is that this link exists, because inhabitants of areas in Iraq and Syria are fleeing because they are being murdered by those who are attacking us today." ~~~~~ German Chancellor Angela Merkel agrees. On Wednesday, she vowed to maintain her open-door refugee policy, despite intense criticism at home and in the EU, caused by fears that refugees are a security risk. Merkel's own coalition and other EU states oppose her plan to take up to 1 million migrants this year in Germany and make EU states accept refugee quotas. Merkel told the Bundestag the security threat level in Germany is high but insisted : "The strongest response to terrorists is to carry on living our lives and our values as we have until now, self-confident and free, considerate and engaged." She was loudly applauded. To appease critics in her conservative party, especially in Bavaria, she said migrants who don't need protection must be sent home. She said the EU must resolve the crisis by working for peace in Syria, engaging Turkey as a partner in the refugee crisis, and protecting Europe's Schengen passport-free area by EU states agreeing to accept migrant quotas. A Wednesday poll put her conservative coalition up three points at 39%. ~~~~~ However, yesterday, just after Merkel's declaration, her Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told an Austrian newspaper the EU should set a limit on the number of refugees it takes in, seeking out those most clearly entitled to protection. De Maiziere said the EU should commit to "a generous concluding intake of refugees. Truly needy cases - from Syria, from Iraq - will be jointly sought out." He said his idea would include better protection of EU external borders, and the combination could help overcome resistance from some EU member states to the redistribution of refugees across the EU. ~~~~~ In the wake of the Paris attacks, Balkan countries that are transit routes for asylum seekers headed to northern Europe are cracking down, refusing to admit people of certain nationalities. Humanitarian workers report that migrants from countries other than Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq are now stopped, raising fears of a migrant crisis in Greece. ~~~~~ Reuters says sources told it Germany will start deporting asylum seekers from the Balkan states of Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro, under an agreement to repatriate asylum seekers whose identification papers had expired or been destroyed -- many destroy their passports on arrival in their destination country to avoid being sent home. In September, Germany declared Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro "safe," so their citizens, like those of Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia, would automatically be ineligible for asylum. Germany has identified 150,000 asylum seekers it wants to deport. Albania, Kosovo and Montenegro have now agreed to recognize Germany's identification procedure and temporary travel document. German deportation of applicants from Pakistan would use this document, but negotiations are not concluded. ~~~~~ Dear readers, hundreds of Moroccans, Algerians and Pakistanis stormed the Greece - Macedonia border yesterday, tearing down barbed wire and demanding to continue to northern Europe. Some 1,500 migrants are stranded on Greece's northern border after the EU began to allow only those fleeing conflict in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq to enter the Balkans. The Balkans' border clamp down leaves tens of thousands stranded in Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Geeece. The EU crisis is neither solved nor improving. The Balkans and Greece should not be the dumping grounds that make Merkel's policy work. It's Merkel's "one size fits all" Eurozone policy applied once again to southern Europe. Neither mess will be resolved soon.