dpa
Brussels/Beirut
The European Commission has promised Lebanon financial aid totalling around 1 billion euros ($1.07bn) in order to stop the flow into the European Union of refugees from Syria currently living there.
“To underline our support, I can announce a financial package of 1 billion euros for Lebanon that would be available from this year until 2027,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in Beirut on Thursday, after talks with caretaker Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati and Cypriot President Nikos Christodoulides.
The package aims to strengthen Lebanon’s education, social protection and health service and will also support the armed forces, mainly through equipment and training, plus infrastructure for border management.
“We refuse to let our homeland become an alternative homeland,” Mikati said, underlining that Beirut appreciates the EU’s help.
“No one wants the Syrian refugees to be able to come home [more] than us, together with the partners and their host communities,” a commission spokesman said. “What is important for us is that these people can return to safe conditions.”
Mikati agreed, saying, “What is required, as a first stage, is European and international recognition that most of the Syrian regions have become safe, which will facilitate the process of returning the displaced.” Syrians from Lebanon, which is some 160km from Cyprus, have been arriving almost daily by boat in the EU island republic in recent months. Around 4,000 migrants have already been counted since the beginning of the year, compared to just 78 in the first quarter of the previous year, according to Christodoulides.
In absolute numbers, this is significantly fewer than in Italy, Spain and Greece, for example, where boat refugees from countries such as Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Morocco and Turkey arrive. But in relation to its population, nowhere else in the EU receives as many asylum applications as Cyprus, whose refugee camps are overcrowded.
Christodoulides and von der Leyen also met Parliamentary Speaker Nabih Berri, a close ally of the pro-Iranian Hezbollah movement.
