EU Deal to Share Out Asylum Seekers Due in Days, Official Says; Shelters for Migrants are Filling Up Across Germany as Attitudes Toward the Newcomers Harden; Italy’s Meloni Vows ‘Extraordinary Measures’ to Deal with Migrant Crisis, Renews Call for Naval Blockade

EU deal to share out asylum seekers due in days, official says:

The European Union’s top migration official said the bloc was set to agree on how to handle irregular immigration soon after ministers’ talks yielded no final deal on Thursday with Berlin and Rome worried over rising arrivals ahead of key elections.

The ministers were searching for agreement on a long-stalled system for the sharing out across the EU of asylum seekers who reach Europe outside of official border crossings.

“I’m sure that in a few days we will have a formal decision on the general approach for the crisis mechanism,” said EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, declining to give details.

She put irregular arrivals this year at 250,000 people — mostly those who fled wars and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and South Asia, and reached the EU across the Mediterranean.

All eyes were on whether German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser backed the so-called “crisis mechanism” for distributing people to avoid overwhelming Italy and other countries of entry after Berlin sunk a similar proposal last summer.

A diplomat told Reuters that Berlin agreed to an updated scheme during talks of the bloc’s 27 migration ministers in Brussels on Thursday.

But there was no full announcement of an agreement, with diplomatic sources pointing to Italy for delay. Asked about the matter during a visit in Berlin on Thursday, Italy’s Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani said Rome had asked for more time to examine the latest proposal.

The bloc’s 27 governments want to have a functioning migration system in place to look in control for their voters ahead of a pan-EU parliamentary election in 2024. —>READ MORE HERE

Shelters for migrants are filling up across Germany as attitudes toward the newcomers harden:

Dozens of people from around the world lined up on a sunny morning this week in front of a former mental health hospital in Berlin to apply for asylum in Germany.

There were two older women from Moldova. A young man from Somalia sat next to them on a bench. A group of five young Pakistanis chatted loudly, standing behind two pregnant women from Vietnam.

The newcomers are among more than 10,000 migrants who have applied for asylum in the German capital this year, and are coming at a time when Berlin is running out of space to accommodate them.

“The situation is not very good at the moment,” Sascha Langenbach, the spokesperson for the state office for refugee affairs in Berlin, said in an interview this week. “This is much more than we expected last year.”

The former mental health hospital in Berlin’s Reinickendorf neighborhood was turned into the city’s registration center for asylum-seekers in 2019 and can house up to 1,000 migrants.

But it’s full.

Officials have put an additional 80 beds in a church on the premises. Beyond that, there are another 100 asylum shelters in Berlin, but those are at capacity too.

Berlin’s state government says it will open a hangar at the former Tempelhof airport to make space for migrants, put up a big tent at the asylum seekers’ registration center, and open a former hardware store and hotels and hostels in the city to provide another 5,500 beds for more migrants the city is expecting will come through the end of the year.

There are also not enough places in kindergartens and schools. In addition to the asylum seekers, Berlin has also taken in another 11,000 Ukrainian refugees this year who fled Russia’s war. —>READ MORE HERE

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+++++Italy’s Meloni Vows ‘Extraordinary Measures’ to Deal with Migrant Crisis, Renews Call for Naval Blockade+++++

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