(Brussels) The item at the top of the agenda for the European Institutions these days is still the refugee crisis. The “explosive” situations in Calais and at the Macedonia-Greece border are at the centre of all the efforts of the EU Commission, which is also working at a document and at a plan to handle the emergency. Measures such as infringement procedures too could be taken against those countries that fail to meet the obligation to take in migrants “rehomed” from the countries they first landed in. Austria too is taking centre stage because of its unilateral decision to lay down a daily quota on the number of asylum seekers from the Balkan countries that they intend to take in. In the meantime, the European Parliament (as a Civil Freedoms committee), along with the European Commission, has been working at a plan to create a coastguard to handle migratory pressures at the EU’s external borders. Next week’s plenary meeting in Strasbourg, which will address several topics, such as the results of the latest summit of the heads of state and government (migration, Brexit) and reports on the progress made by the former Yugoslavian Republic of Macedonia and by Montenegro in their accession negotiations, is being prepared over these days; resolutions about banking union, potential changes in the European Union’s law-making process, the situation of refugee women, will be voted on, to coincide with the International Women’s Day on March 8th.