Charity rejects €60m from EU in a migrant policy row
Medical aid group Médecins Sans Frontières has refused to take any further EU funding in protest at its immigration policy, which it says put migrants’ lives in peril worldwide.
Up to now the French charity, which gives emergency aid to people affected by armed conflict, epidemics, natural disasters and exclusion from healthcare worldwide, has received around €60million a year from the EU. This made up around 8% of its income, with the rest coming from private donations.
The decision comes three months after a Turkey/Europe agreement saw Turkey paid to receive migrants sent back from Europe. The charity says this has left 8,000 people stuck in Greece, waiting for their situation to be clarified and living in overcrowded conditions.
Secretary-general Jérôme Oberreit says the EU-Turkey pact was close to putting the “very concept of ‘refugee’, and the protection it offers, in danger.”
“Once more, Europe is not focusing on how to protect people, but on the most efficient way of keeping them at a distance,” he said.
Mr Oberreit says the MSF can use financial reserves to make up the shortfall and will look at new ways of funding.
Asked for a response by Connexion, the EU said: “EU humanitarian aid, including in Turkey, is provided solely on the basis of needs and focuses on the most vulnerable.
“MSF is not an implementing partner of EU humanitarian aid in Turkey; neither has MSF submitted any requests for funding of their activities in Turkey.
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“Therefore, no lifesaving humanitarian aid for refugees in Turkey will be affected. The Commission takes note of the decision by Médecins Sans Frontières to suspend applications for funding from European institutions or EU Member States’ aid agencies.”
The €60m paid to MSF accounted for just over 1% of the overall European Commission humanitarian aid budget.
However, not all MSF staff are happy. Michaël Neuman, who heads its think tank, said MSF needed the money and refusing it on moral grounds was complicated. “The public will feel we are giving up a great deal of money and some who give funds will ask why we are throwing such a large sum in the rubbish bin,” he said.
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He added that Europe had always had a policy of keeping refugees in camps and that MSF had not had to comply with any conditions for the EU money.
“Receiving public money often has moral implications. We take money from Canada but they give funding to arms in Saudi Arabia, which we cannot condone.”
Despite this, MSF staff agree there was a need to denounce Europe’s migrant policies and the decision to quit the EU has already been put into action.
