Europe and Winter Weather

Middle East Africa: More than 54,500 people have already reached Europe by sea this year, including 50,668 through Greece, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency, according to Nine News Australia. They keep flowing in despite stormy winter weather making the journey ever more perilous, a fact highlighted by a UNHCR report that 235 migrants were dead or missing already in 2016. The 28-nation bloc has all but failed to curb or control the influx of asylum seekers from the Middle East and Africa, more than one million of whom arrived in Europe last year, mainly via Greece and heading towards the EU biggest economy, Germany. On Thursday, 24 drowned when their boat sank off a Greek island close to the Turkish coast. EU nations have grown unnerved by the continent worst migration crisis since World War II, one that has jeopardised the bloc Schengen zone of passport-free travel over national borders that has contributed greatly to its vaunted prosperity. Much of the EU debate on how to handle the influx has focused on distinguishing people fleeing war, and thus eligible for international protection, from "economic" migrants seeking better lives without being under immediate threat."Indeed we have seen that the numbers of people arriving in Europe who don't have a genuine claim to asylum have been rising slightly," a spokeswoman for the European Commission told a regular news briefing on Thursday. (news.financializer.com). As reported in the news.