EU Refugee Crisis Caused by West's Toxic Policy in Middle East – Syriza MP

MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The destructive policy pursued by the West in the Middle East for decades has led to the uncontrolled influx of refugees into the European Union, a member of the Greek left-wing Syriza party told Sputnik on Wednesday.

"The situation the Middle East is facing now is the result of the US and EU policy. For decades they did all but impossible to ruin the states there and to reach to the point we are right now. This means they actually are responsible for the current situation," Sia Anagnostopoulou said.

Anagnostopoulou, the former Greek alternate minister for European affairs and the candidate in the Greek parliamentary elections, added that the European Union is currently experiencing the second wave of refugees, as statistics on migrant arrivals to Greece by sea testify.

"On Lesbos there are 20,000 refugees right now. But the second wave began not because some countries started opening the borders to the refugees, but because the war in the Middle East continues," she stressed.

Moreover, the MP thinks that EU member states are trying to fence themselves off from the refugee crisis in the absence of a common European approach to the problem, a member of the Greek left-wing Syriza party told Sputnik on Wednesday.

“Although Europe gives money, it still does not have any political position on the issue on the whole. The result of the absence of this policy is that each country wants to try to isolate itself, in order not to have responsibilities, to avoid responsibilities on accepting refugees,” Sia Anagnostopoulou, the former Greek alternate minister for European affairs and the candidate in the Greek parliamentary elections, said.

Greece is one of a number of EU member states that has found itself in the middle of an unprecedented migrant crisis. At the same time, Europe is currently divided over the refugee crisis, with some countries pressing for mandatory quotas to relocate migrants, while other EU states are reluctant to share the burden of accepting a high numbers of asylum seekers.Earlier in the day, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said estimates suggested that there were some 200,000 migrants in Greece.

A total number of refugees that arrived in the European Union during the first seven months exceeded 340,000, according to the EU external border agency Frontex estimation.