The tweets posted by European Council President Donald Tusk on Wednesday evening triggered a war of words with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel also criticized “the closure of the Balkan Route” as unilateral actions.”
Donald Tusk claimed that the closure of the Balkan Route was a common decision taken by the 28 member states and thanked the West Balkan states for sealing their borders.
Irregular flows of migrants along Western Balkans route have come to an end. Not a question of unilateral actions but common EU28 decision
— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) March 9, 2016
I thank Western Balkan countries for implementing part of EU's comprehensive strategy to deal with migration crisis
— Donald Tusk (@eucopresident) March 9, 2016
PM Alexis Tsipras replied to him – also on Twitter:
The Western Balkans route has come to an end due to unilateral actions by certain countries. EU has no future if it goes on like that. (1/2)
— Alexis Tsipras (@tsipras_eu) March 9, 2016
We expect D. Tusk, president of EU28 to focus efforts on implementing our common decisions and not encourage those who ignore them. (2/2)
— Alexis Tsipras (@tsipras_eu) March 9, 2016
At the same time, Angela Merkel criticized the de facto closure of the Balkan Route. “This is not the solution to the overall problem“, she said at a meeting of her own party CDU in Bad Neuenahr in Rhineland-Palatinate federal state. Mentioning the plight of refugees stranded in Greece, she said that this cannot go well in the long run and stressed: “We can not make nice in 27 countries and have a country dealing alone with the problem.” It was important to find a European balance. “This will be a big task.”
One after the other the West Balkan countries, FYROM, Slovenia, Serbia and Croatia doubled locked their border gates to thousands of refugees trapping them in Greece. These “unilateral actions” took place although, the EU-Turkey Summit ended with a draft with no provision about the refugees in Greece and not a final decision which will be taken on March 17-18.
Now what? Did the 28 EU leaders jointly decide the closure of the Balkan Route on Monday? Apparently, they did not.
In the official statement issued by the European Concil it stands:
2. Heads of State or Government further recalled that the European Council, at its meeting on 18-19 February, decided to get back to a situation where all Members of the Schengen area fully apply the Schengen Borders Code, while taking into account the specificities of the maritime borders, and to end the wave-through approach. Irregular flows of migrants along the Western Balkans route have now come to an end.
What I read -and all KTG-readers – also read in first place is a reference to <migrants> and not to refugees. Wording is important here, when the statements mentions <refugees> in other sections.
So, I propose the least Donald Turk can do is to read what he wrote on the official statement for one more time…
Give him some real dope Raki, the stuff he gots from Junker makes him to tell totally different bullshit depending on where he drinks and what his hosts wanna hear; hopefully it was not the cheap stuff in his airplane. But don’t tell Putin, we don’t wanna see a war Vodka versus Raki.
Considdering that he is appointed as an administrator and PR manager for the Council of Ministers, Tusk needs to be sacked for lies and right wing propaganda. We do not want to know his opinions — they are fascist. He is incapable of doing his job — OUT NOW!
Ah, the beauty of the EU. All kinds of people running around claiming to be in charge (Tusk, Juncker, DieselBloomers, Moscovici, Schauble, etc, etc, etc), yet nothing gets done and no one ever accepts responsibility for what goes wrong.