European Union interior ministers approved a plan Tuesday to relocate 120,000 refugees across the continent to ease the strain on “frontline” states.
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Wednesday, European Union leaders will gather for an extraordinary meeting in Brussels on how to deal with Europe’s worst refugee crisis since World War II, which has seen hundreds of thousands flee conflict in counties including Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Eritrea.
Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and the Czech Republic voted against the plan, which seeks to redistribute 66,000 refugees in Greece and Italy across the 28-nation bloc, with another 54,000 asylum seekers being relocated in a year’s time.
But Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who chaired the meeting, said he had “no doubt” opposing countries would implement the measures.
“This is the fight we are now conducting”, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka said Tuesday, as he reinforced his country’s opposition to a permanent redistribution mechanism. “Reason lost today”.
Refugees and migrants arriving in Greece and Italy have been streaming north across the continent to reach more affluent nations like Germany, triggering disputes between governments in central and eastern Europe as they alternately try to block the flow or to shunt the burden on to their neighbours. Poland, which had opposed the proposal, voted for it.
Last week, the ministers agreed on a previous proposal to distribute 40,000 refugees.
Denmark also temporarily attempted to stop and register all refugees arriving at its borders but ultimately decided to let those who did not wish to seek asylum to travel on to countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland.
He said that, “if people are distributed in Europe, then they can’t choose what country they go to”.
Thousands of migrants, however, have successfully entered Bulgaria without being registered over the past year to avoid possible deportation from Germany (their most likely destination) or another Western country. various sources have been suggesting.
The United Nations Refugee agency says 120,000 people is just a drop in the bucket and that Europe needs to do a lot more to properly deal with the crisis.
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.
“Under the terms of the plan, countries could postpone taking up to 30% of their required total for up to a year if they had an emergency that prevented them from doing so”, the Washington Post reported.
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Refugees break a police cordon in their rush to board buses in Tovarnik, near the Croatian-Serbian border.
