The EU is still hoping to convince Hungary and Poland to sign up to an elusive agreement on migration and refugee resettlement, the bloc’s Migration commissioner said on Wednesday (16 May).Dimitris Avramopoulos was speaking as he unveiled an overhaul of the Visa Information Service database containing information on people applying for Schengen visas….Avramopoulos said he was “trying to convince the last remaining ones to join our comprehensive migration policy”, which he described as “the only pragmatic answer to a real problem we are confronted with.”“There are three or four countries that have different ideas”, he added.The Commission has earmarked €35 billion for border and migration control in its proposed seven-year budget framework covering 2021-2027, a near threefold increase on current spending….The International Organisation for Migration data (IOM) reported that almost 19,000 people arrived in Europe between January and April this year compared to around 44,600 in 2017. Those figures compare with over 870,000 arrivals in 2015, at the height of the crisis.However, almost 3,000 people entered Greece via the Turkish border last month, most of them coming from war-ravaged Syria and Iraq, marking a slight monthly increase.“We have seen some increases at the Greek/Turkish land borders,” acknowledged Avramopoulos, although he added that “I have an open number to ministers in Greece and Turkey… the situation is under control.”…“We are against building fences, on the contrary, we are in favour of building bridges with neighbouring countries,” he said.“The EU will never be a fortress. Migration will stay not only in Europe and the world for the decades to come, and we have to be well prepared. No country can manage this situation alone.”
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