Publish Date: 17 December 2015 - 12:02

BRUSSELS, Dec. 17 (MNA) – The chairman of the European Commission (EC), Jean-Claude Juncker, on Wednesday defended the protection of the Schengen Treaty and presented a new plan to protect the bloc's border, and repeated the assistance to Turkey to stop the inflow of immigrants.

Juncker noted the need to protect the Schengen Treaty at a time when several signatory nations of that pact on free border transit are building walls and barbwire fences to prevent the transit of thousands of undocumented immigrants.

A new plan to set up a common surveillance force at the exterior border of the European Union (EU) was welcomed suspiciously by some of the 28 members of the bloc.

The States, he added, would not lose their sovereignty after the implementation of the new mechanism, which will be submitted to the EU summit next Thursday and Friday in this capital.

The new plan consists of supervising the migratory flows that have caused chaos over the past few months in countries like Croatia, Hungary, Austria and in other countries outside the EU, like Serbia and Macedonia.

According to Juncker, the European countries have no longer many borders, but only one, the common border.

The EC chief also defended the pact reached with Turkey in November to grant that country three billion euros in exchange of reinforcing its border to prevent the entry of thousands of undocumented migrants who cross the Aegean Sea to reach the EU.

Our bloc has the obligation to help its neighbors to deal with a delicate humanitarian situation, said Juncker, in allusion to the existence of 2.2 million Syrian refugees and 230,000 asylum seekers from other countries in Turkey.

 

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PL-35/MNA