Read the news item covering the panel here.
After a year of unprecedented flows of refugees two developments have changed the situation:
- the closure of the Western Balkan route initiated by Macedonia in February 2016 and backed by Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary and Austria; and
- the accord between the European Union and Turkey concluded in March 2016 that includes the provision that Turkey will accept the return of migrants and refugees from Greek islands while the EU will start resettling Syrian refugees directly from Turkey.
There are many questions – moral, political and practical – linked to these recent developments: namely the status of Turkey as safe transit country, the swap between return and resettlement following the 1:1 formula, the situation of refugees in Turkey, and the possibility that the flow might just be diverted from the Eastern Mediterranean and the Western Balkans to other routes that are both costlier and riskier to take.
The panel will discuss forward-looking policy options that require strong answers to current challenges such as: refugees fleeing humanitarian disasters in our neighborhood, irregular migrants mixing with refugees, managing local pressures on EU external borders as well as the crisis of the Schengen zone.
- Moderator: Rainer Münz, Visiting Professor at CEU
- Andras Kovats, Director , Menedék – Hungarian Association for Migrants
- Boldizsar Nagy, Associate Professor, CEU
- Gerald Knaus, Chairman, European Stability Initiative