Cardinal Veglio: EU migration proposals "do not solve the problem"

(Vatican Radio) The leading Vatican official dealing with migration said he was “not satisfied” with an agreement made last week by European Union leaders after an emergency meeting on migration.

The agreement tripled funding for patrolling in the Mediterranean Sea, where thousands of migrants have perished this year.

Cardinal Antonio Maria Veglio, the President of the Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant People, on Friday told Italy’s Religious Information Service (SIR) that although more funding was needed for patrols, “it does not solve the problem.”

“What's needed is a long-term program and a serious migration policy,” he said.

Cardinal Veglio faulted the EU policy that the initial receiving country is responsible for taking in refugees, adding “all are willing to give money, as long as they are not disturbed [by taking in refugees] in their own country.”

The Cardinal was especially critical of a proposal to bomb the smuggler’s boats in north Africa, calling the idea “strange” and “useless”.

“There is international law,” Cardinal Veglio said. “Bombing a country is an act of war. And what are they aiming at? Just the migrants boats? Who can guarantee that the weapons will not also kill people nearby? You can destroy all the boats, but the problem of migrants fleeing wars, persecutions and poverty will still exist.”

He said migrants will always flee wars and other miserable situations, and if you destroy their boats, they will either build new ones, or travel by land.

Cardinal Veglio called his solution “utopian, almost impossible.”

“Fight against the causes of migration,” he suggested.  “Try and make the countries from which they flee better.”