European Union leaders will attempt to forge a long-term strategy to handle the refugee crisis at an emergency summit in Brussels today, after justice ministers backed a contentious relocation plan for refugees by resorting to a rarely used majority voting system. “Send them a bit to Hungary and Romania“.
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But tensions have kept boiling over, with fears the EU’s cherished Schengen passport-free zone could be under threat from the tide of migrants, many of whom are trying to make their way to Germany.
Migrants look out through the window of a train while waiting to depart from the railway station in Tovarnik, Croatia, September 22, 2015.
The EU interior ministers’ meeting occurred after the European Parliament approved the quota plan last week over the opposition of several countries.
“The most important thing is that there should be no moral imperialism”, Hungary’s hardline leader Viktor Orban said during a visit to the southern German state of Bavaria when asked what he expected from Merkel.
“We would’ve preferred to have adoption by consensus, but we did not manage to achieve that”.
“It is about time that member states stepped up to the plate and did what they need to do”, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said.
Ms Fitzgerald said: “The Government has already announced that Ireland would be prepared to accept up to 4,000 persons in need of worldwide protection, including the 520 programme refugees now being resettled in Ireland directly from refugee camps”. “If we had not done this, Europe would have been even more divided, and its credibility would have been even more undermined”.
Slovakia said it would dispute the quota deal in court, underscoring the deep divisions that have emerged in Europe over its biggest migration crisis since World War II. “It is a moment for everybody to show that we really mean it when we talk about responsibility and solidarity”.
Elsewhere, Austrian Police say about 1,000 new arrivals are expected soon at the main border crossing point with Hungary, after almost 10,000 migrants and refugees trekked into the country on Monday.
Ireland will be among the first to welcome refugees from Syria, Eritrea, Iraq, and possibly Afghanistan with the minister saying the country will be ready to accept in the next few weeks the first of 3,500 spread over the next two years.
European interior ministers have agreed to relocate 120,000 migrants across Europe, reports the BBC. Tuesday’s decision would raise the total to 160,000.
Spokesman Melissa Fleming added: “This must be coupled with the immediate creation or expansion of facilities in Greece and Italy to receive and assist large numbers of arriving refugees and migrants, and where people would be screened and identified for relocation”.
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Among the outstanding issues that Tusk, the summit’s official host, wants addressed: increasing assistance to European Union member nations that are receiving the brunt of the migrant influx, and greater cooperation with non-EU countries in the Balkans and Turkey, which is now home to nearly 2 million refugees – many of whom have fled Syria’s civil war.
