Dans le Washington Post : The big thing missing from Europe’s solution to the refugee crisis? Refugees.

LUXEMBOURG -- Having fled the ravages of the Islamic State in his native Iraq, Manaf Hamaameen landed on the Greek island of Lesbos last fall thinking he and his family would start their lives over in Britain or Sweden. 

An official at the island’s main refugee camp had a different idea. She told Hamaameen that he could save his family the arduous trip over land by agreeing to let the European Union fly them to a place he had never heard of: Luxembourg.

“From that moment, we changed the course of our journey,” said Hamaameen, who has two severely disabled young children, neither of whom can walk.

The solution to Hamaameen’s dilemma was also supposed to be the key to unlocking Europe’s struggle with an unparalleled flow of refugees. By taking people off the migrant trail and distributing them more evenly across the continent, the E.U. could bring order to a process marked by chaos.

But four months after European leaders agreed to the plan following long and bitter negotiations, the program has been crippled by a lack of cooperation — from countries and the refugees themselves. Out of an intended total of 160,000 asylum seekers, the E.U. has relocated a paltry 272.

The figure — which is less than the number of asylum seekers who arrived on Lesbos every hour at the peak of the fall — is an embarrassment for E.U. leaders who advocate a common solution to a crisis that has strained European unity as no other in recent decades. With refugee flows expected to begin climbing again within weeks, it adds to the odds that Europe will ultimately have to close its borders to refugees — and that walls will rise on a continent where the ideal of free movement once flourished.
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“We need to slow down the flows,” said Dimitris Avramopoulos, who as E.U. migration commissioner was the relocation plan’s architect. “European solidarity is at stake.”

Avramopoulos acknowledged in an interview that the relocation program had been a disappointment. He blamed countries that remain unwilling to welcome refugees, even though nearly every E.U. member is required to accept a quota based on its gross domestic product and population. The program has been hotly contested from the start, with Hungary and Slovakia going so far as to challenge its legitimacy in court.

Pour lire l'article en entier : https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/the-big-thing-missing-from-europes-solution-to-the-refugee-crisis-refugees/2016/01/10/0bb0de88-b315-11e5-8abc-d09392edc612_story.html