The European Union (EU) has allocated £310 billion to spend by 2020 on so-called ‘social cohesion’ projects, and a commissioner is calling for that money to be spent in migrant “ghettos” to stop them becoming “a nuclear bomb in the future”.
The Brussels boss said the “cohesion” policy would reduce inequality across the Union, particularly by pumping funds into the largely former Communist Eastern nations.
“Social integration will be crucial in the years to come,” the Commissioner for Regional Policy Corina Crețu told the Thomson Reuters Foundation at the World Urban Forum last week.
“If we allow ghettos or segregation of migrants, this will become a nuclear bomb in the future,” the Romanian politician said at the gathering in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur.
After German Chancellor suspended the EU’s Dublin agreement in 2015 and said “no upper limit” of migrants could come, many of Europe’s Eastern members unwittingly become transit nations for the asylum seekers.
More than one million Middle Eastern migrants poured in, creating huge camps in Greece and Italy and unrest and even riots on the borders of Hungary, Macedonia, and other states.
Ms. Crețu, who oversees the bloc’s cohesion policy, highlighted recent EU investment in the frontlines of the continent’s migrant crisis, mentioning the purchase of two rescue boats for Italy and a support network for mayors of cities struggling to cope.
When residents and migrants clash, “Mayors are in the middle”, she said, naming the Greek island of Chios, where migrant numbers have surged, causing riots and violent clashes.
The EU forced a migrants relocation policy through the EU Parliament in 2015, but Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic have opposed the plan and refused to accept the asylum seekers.
EU bosses have accused the Eastern nations of betraying “European values” for resisting mass migration and have threatened to fine them unless they give in.
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