Italy, France, Germany Call for Asylum Review; Human Cost of Migrant Crisis; European Asylum Review; Europe Struggles to Deal With Number of Migrants; European Markets Close Higher
RICHARD QUEST, HOST: The market closing what looks like to be the best of the session, up nearly 300 points on a day almost the reversal of yesterday, green right the way through the trading day, even though Asia was down.</s>QUEST: And tall man hits with little gavel as trading comes to a close on Wednesday, it's the 2nd of September. Tonight, Europe takes its first steps to fix its migrant crisis. Germany, Italy, and France demanding a asylum overhaul. The markets have staged a Wednesday rebound. It's another triple- digit move for the Dow. And Rupert Murdoch's prodigal daughter returns. Rebekah Brooks is back at News Corps. I'm Richard Quest. I mean business. Good evening. Europe's migrant crisis continues, and in many ways, is getting worse. And tonight, the three biggest economies on mainland Europe are demanding the EU's asylum rules be overhauled. As the crisis mounts on the continent's eastern doorstep, Italy, France, and Germany say the current system's broken and a united response is needed. Meanwhile, in northern France, hundreds of migrants storm the railroad tracks near Calais. They're attempting to reach Britain, and they shut down the vital Eurostar, the Eurotunnel connection, Paris and London. And in Hungary, scenes of growing desperation. After escaping war and chaos, migrants are still waiting to board trains headed for other parts of northern Europe. Zoltan Kovacs is the Hungarian government spokesman and says his country is upholding the law.</s>ZOLTAN KOVACS, HUNGARIAN GOVERNMENT SPOKESMAN: The only real solution is if nations ask illegal migrants abide the rules. That is, they go to the shelters, to those places that have been assigned to them. And obviously, we are not going institutionalize an illegal situation that is at the railway station at the moment.</s>QUEST: Now, there are times when a single image, a photograph, pulls the horror of a crisis bluntly into focus. I need to warn you, the photograph we are about to show you is agonizing. It is distressing and, quite simply, it is painful. You may wish to look away for the next moment or so. We believe, though, this photograph emphasizes the calamity facing those fleeing the horrors of their homelands, risking death for a better live. People are dying, and in some cases, they are too young and innocent to speak for themselves. And today, among the dead, is the boy in the red shirt. This boy was found washed ashore, lifeless, near Bodrum on the Turkish coast. We believe the child to be Syrian. His family was attempting to cross the Mediterranean, reaching the island of Kos in Greece. His mother may have also drowned when their boat capsized. We don't know how many people the boat was carrying. We know at least 12 are now dead, including the boy in the red shirt. Hala Gorani joins me from Berlin this evening. Hala, we've heard that there's to be this coordinated response, but what does a coordinated response mean practically?</s>HALA GORANI, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, what France, Germany, and Italy have agreed to do is to review asylum rules that are about a quarter century old. They just do not apply to the current situation anymore. The protocol that calls for asylum seekers to register and request asylum in the first port of call, which is the first country that they reach, in many cases in Europe, it is Italy, it is also Greece. They have signed a document that calls for a review of those rules. This is not a rule change, this is still very much a preliminary step. The question, though, is why is Europe not able -- after all, it is a common political project -- why is it not able to come up with a unified, harmonized response to what is the biggest migrant crisis on this continent since the end of the second World War. We're seeing so many different responses. Italy, on the one hand. Greece, for instance, with no reception centers in Kos. Hungary, that will not allow many of the refugees to travel on because it says they are not following the rules. Germany that is unfurling a welcome mat like no other country apart from Sweden in this continent. The UK, that after all, is only offering a few hundred resettlement spots for Syrians. So, you just see based only --</s>QUEST: Right.</s>GORANI: -- on the initial response how disparate and how different -- differently each country is addressing this crisis. So, to come up with a harmonized response right now, I think, is a tall order, and doesn't appear to be happening anytime soon, Richard.</s>QUEST: But -- OK. So, if they're going to have a difficulty, but the immediate crisis and the tragedy -- I mean, we've been talking about it this evening -- Hala, when we talk about the photograph of the boy in the red shirt, you are in the heart of Europe tonight. Have pictures -- has that photograph shocked people?</s>GORANI: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it has gone viral online. It is on the front pages of most of the European papers that have already essentially indicated what they will lead with tomorrow, including "Bild," the German newspaper, whose editor-in-chief we interviewed on the program just a few minutes ago. It has shocked people, but will it change policy at the highest levels of government? It doesn't appear as though it will. And if it does, it is taking a very long time, and this situation requires a response -- a very quick response, because people are, indeed, dying every single day. But it is shocking people, and people are talking about it. The question is whether the politicians in charge are going to act quickly enough, Richard.</s>QUEST: Hala Gorani, who's in Berlin, covering that this evening. Hala, thank you. Now, one of the key issues in all of this has been the inability of Europe, as Hala was saying, to come up with this harmonized response. It's not the first time, of course, whether it's been the eurozone crisis, the issue over Greece, time and again over the 2008 crisis, Europe has failed to have the institutions necessary. Guy Verhofstadt is the former Belgian minister. He's the leader of European parliament's liberal alliance, and he says like these other crises, the refugee issue today has exposed the EU's deep structural flaws.</s>GUY VERHOFSTADT, ALLIANCE OF LIBERALS AND DEMOCRATS FOR EUROPE: It means that we need absolutely to reform these institutions. We need it to tackle the euro crisis, we know that. We need a political union, economic union, a treasury in Europe, otherwise the currency, the single currency, is not sustainable. But the same is happening on the refugee crisis, because we don't have an external border control by all member states together. We have a Schengen area, but we have not an external border control of this area. We don't have a common asylum system. It is still 28 different systems. And we don't have a legal migration policy in the European Union. So, it is impossible to solve this refugee crisis if first of all we don't put in place these tools and these institutions.</s>QUEST: Right. Well, I can hear Europeans say, you may be right, Mr. Verhofstadt, but it's a disgrace that we don't have them. And bearing in mind the size and scale of the European institutions, what on Earth are they all up to if they're not dealing and being able to deal with crises like this?</s>VERHOFSTADT: It's a disgrace, but the disgrace is not for the European Union. The disgrace is for the member states, because it is the member states who don't want to create one big agency responsible for the protection of the external borders. It is the nation states, the member states, who don't want to establish one European asylum system in which we use and apply the same rules --</s>QUEST: Right.</s>VERHOFSTADT: -- and the same system.</s>QUEST: But we're seeing this in real time with real human misery at the moment. And I'll give you an example.</s>VERHOFSTADT: Yes.</s>QUEST: The player that everybody wants to hear from at the moment is not Donald Tusk or Jean-Claude Juncker. The player everyone wants to hear from is Angela Merkel. It proves your point, but it doesn't make it any easier to get that common policy that you seek.</s>VERHOFSTADT: Angela Merkel cannot on herself solve this problem. She can maybe take -- and I hope she is doing it -- several hundred thousand of these refugees, mainly Syrian refugees. But alone, even Angela Merkel is not capable to solve this crisis. She needs the cooperation of the 28 member states. And moreover, she needs the cooperation --</s>QUEST: Right.</s>VERHOFSTADT: -- of the European Union. Let me give you one example. Let me -- let's as fast as possible create safe havens, facilities in the zones of conflict, in countries like Libya and Egypt, instead of what we are doing now. Now we oblige people to come to Europe to ask for asylum. Why not creating the possibility for these refugees to ask for asylum or to ask for a temporary protection in the zone of conflict and in these countries like Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, or Turkey?</s>QUEST: How damaging do you think this crisis, this migrant crisis -- not so much on the humane side, which is absolutely appalling, but for the European side, for the EU and the EC, the inability to seemingly deal with any crisis?</s>VERHOFSTADT: It's enormous -- it's damaging. It's -- I think, Richard, it is more damaging than, for example, the euro crisis. Because the euro crisis is about figures. Here we are talking about human lives. Human lives who are even lost like, for example, with these tragedies in the Mediterranean. And so, it's absolutely necessary that in the coming weeks, I think there is an extraordinary European summit to try to develop such a holistic, global approach to this crisis.</s>QUEST: But when they do sit down to have that summit in a couple of weeks, do you believe it is even possible to get a common approach, or will we end up with classic euro fudge?</s>VERHOFSTADT: I hope that this time it's got to be different. Because the problems we are facing are so huge that the member states are obliged to go in a European direction. Until now, it was a problem for Italy because it was problems, tragedies, near Lampedusa. Until now, it was a problem only maybe for Hungary, because there is an enormous flow of refugees to Budapest. But what we have seen the last days and the last weeks is that it is a tragedy everywhere in Europe. Every country in the European Union is affected, be it Britain, be it France, be it Belgium, be it Germany. And it means that our leaders are now really aware of the necessity, I think, to make a jump forward and to develop this European asylum system that we don't have. This European legal migration system, what we don't have, and this common protection of our external borders on a mandatory basis and not on a voluntary basis as is the case now.</s>QUEST: Guy Verhofstadt talking to me from the European Parliament. And many of you will be wondering how you can help the migrants and the refugees, and CNN's Impact Your World website has the links and the information you need. It is at cnn.com/impact. We'll be right back. This is QUEST MEANS BUSINESS.