Nine Spanish NGOs helping refugees are sponsoring a campaign against Spain's non-compliance with the commitments it made as part of the EU's asylum seekers redistribution program, which expired on Tuesday.
In a video released today, a group of NGOs consisting of ACCEM, Amnesty International, Ayuda en Accion, Cear, Coordinadore de Ongd, Fundacion Cepaim, Medicos del Mundo, Oxfam Intermon and Red Acoge criticized the Spanish government, which in two years welcomed only 1,982 people who arrived on the coasts of Italy and Greece, equal to 11.4% of the 17,337 refugees it had pledged to take in.
EU also accused of not honoring 'the smallest commitments'
The European Union has shown itself to be ''incapable of honoring the slightest commitments or moving a finger to prevent the Mediterranean from becoming an ever larger graveyard'', the video states. The NGO Oxfam Intermon has this week paved the way to take the Spanish government to court by calling on the European Commission to take action against Spain for violating the agreement on refugee reception and redistribution. The NGOs say that the EU mechanism aiming to redistribute refugees throughout the bloc has failed, having done so with only 29,000 out of the 160,000 planned for in the agreement.