ON A quiet bend of the River Oise, beside a wooded lake, the Ile de Loisirs activity centre usually runs sailing schools and high-wire tree-climbing adventures. Last autumn its dormitories were briefly turned into an emergency welcome centre for 98 Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Today, however, the gardens outside the residential block are empty again, the wooden picnic benches deserted. The refugee families are already gone. Their speedy resettlement shows that France has plenty of capacity to absorb migrants. It also raises the question of why it is that while Germany is coping with a vast flood of Syrian refugees, France is attracting only a trickle.
The refugees who turned up in this new town, some 40km (25 miles) north-west of Paris, travelled in specially chartered coaches from Munich last September. Officials from the French Office for the Protection of Refugees and Stateless Persons (OFPRA) had gone to Munich in a gesture of solidarity to persuade refugees to settle in France, to help relieve the pressure on the Germans. Less than 48 hours after Cergy offered to take them in, the first coach pulled up outside the activity...Continue reading
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