Norway to accept its first EU refugees under voluntary agreement
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Version 0 of 1. The first of 1,500 refugees Norway promised the EU it would accept are due to arrive in the country this week. Norway’s parliament decided in December it would contribute to the EU refugee programme, which as a non-EU country it is not obliged to take part in. An initial 20 refugees out of a total of 750 permitted this year will be flown into the country from Italy, although others will come from Greece. Another 750 will be accepted in 2017. The agreements with Greece and Italy were established in April, but it has taken months for the refugees to arrive. The first round of 20 refugees are expected to be Eritrean and will arrive to the Østfold Arrival Center in Råde, South of Oslo, on Thursday and will be held there for several days for registration and medical checks. But although the refugees have been flown into the country, none are guaranteed asylum. “They are treated like everyone else who comes to the country,” Østfold Arrival Center manager Helge Ekelund told the Norwegian version of The Local. At the start of this year the number of asylum seekers arriving in Norway plummeted by 95 per cent. The country has adopted strict border checks and introduced financial incentives for migrants to leave voluntarily. |