The Foreign Ministers exchanged views ahead of the EU’s Justice and Home Affairs Council of 22 September and an extraordinary, informal meeting of the European Council of 23 September in Brussels set out to discuss the European Commission’s proposals in the field of migration policy.
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As The Guardian explains it, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania, which opposed the plan, plus five other countries in central and eastern Europe will be forced to take in about 10,000 refugees each. It wants to make European Union countries redistribute among themselves roughly 120,000 refugees now residing in Italy, Greece and Hungary.
“We will strictly reject any attempt to introduce some permanent mechanism of redistributing refugees”, Mr. Sobotka told reporters. “We also reject using a quota system in any temporary mechanism”.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed in part but said Europe would not succeed by building fences. “Even though the large countries may try to out-vote us today, it will be very hard to fulfil the project”.
Meanwhile, the United Nations refugee agency said 477,906 people have arrived in Europe by sea this year and the relocation program being discussed in Brussels “will not be enough to stabilize the situation”.
Sobotka noted in particular the difficulty of ensuring that the migrants remained in the country they were allocated to.
He only said it was his task to find a joint solution.
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On Tuesday, Germany’s top domestic security chief said that hardline Islamists in the country might recruit supporters among new refugees and migrants – though many of those migrants are, in fact, fleeing hardline Islamists in the form of the terrorist group ISIS. From there, the migrants usually walk into Austria.
