Home Secretary says net migration levels "simply unsustainable", German Chancellor says refugee crisis is testing Europe's core ideals
Home Secretary Theresa May wrote in the Sunday Times on Sunday that free movement between EU Member States should mean the freedom to move to a job and not simply to look for work.
Following the latest official migration statistics showing that net migration to the UK reached an all-time record high of 330,000, May said that the "numbers are far too high" and "net migration at that volume is simply unsustainable"
May said that reducing EU migration need not mean undermining the principle of free movement, as "[w]hen it was first enshrined, free movement meant the freedom to move to a job, not the freedom to cross borders to look for work or claim benefits."
"If we want to control immigration - and bring it down to the tens of thousands - we must take some big decisions, face down powerful interests and reinstate the original principle underlying free movement within the EU," the Home Secretary wrote.
BBC News quoted CBI director general John Cridland as saying the "vast majority" of people coming to the UK did so to work and were a "benefit to our economy".
"Our hospitals and care homes couldn't function without overseas workers; building sites that we need to deliver more homes and big infrastructure projects would also stall," he warned.
Theresa May also wrote in the Sunday Times article that the current surge of refugees and asylum seekers crossing into the EU was "a wake-up call". She said EU leaders "must consider the consequences of uncontrolled migration - on wages, jobs and social cohesion of the destination nations; on the economies and societies of the rest; and on the lives and welfare of those who seek to come here."
Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said yesterday that the refugee crisis facing Europe was testing the core ideals about universal rights at the heart of the EU.
Deutsche Welle quoted her as saying: "If Europe fails on the question of refugees, if this close link with universal civil rights is broken, then it won't be the Europe we wished for."
As Germany increasingly receives the overwhelming majority of asylum seekers in the EU, Merkel called for Europe as a whole to move and for its states to share the responsibility for refugees seeking asylum.
"There's no point in publicly calling each other names, but we must simply say that the current situation is not satisfactory," Merkel said.
Reuters quoted Merkel as adding: "If we don't succeed in fairly distributing refugees then of course the Schengen question will be on the agenda for many."
BBC News noted that Merkel also said there would be "no tolerance for those who question the dignity of other people" after a spate of arson attacks on refugee shelters and anti-migrant demonstrations in Germany.
In Austria yesterday, thousands of people attended a rally demanding better rights for refugees after 71 people, most thought to be Syrians, were found dead in a lorry last week.
The rally took place as a service was held for the dead at St Stephen's Cathedral in Vienna.
RTE quoted the archbishop of Vienna, Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, as telling the congregation: "We've had enough. Enough of the deaths, the suffering and the persecution."
Labour leadership contender Yvette Cooper also called for more to be done to help asylum seekers and refugees.
In a speech today, Cooper said: "Too little is being done to help – to assess asylum claims and support refugees, to stop the evil trafficking trade, to prevent illegal or dangerous journeys, to rescue those in peril on the sea."
"Europe has to work together to help – just as we did in generations past. We should be strong enough and resilient enough to rise to the challenge not turn our backs."
Cooper said Europe was witnessing "a humanitarian crisis on a scale we have not seen on our continent since the Second World War" and said the refugee crisis should not be conflated with "immigration": "this is about asylum instead".