EU majority backs refugee quota plan
We would have preferred to have adoption by consensus, but we did not manage to achieve that.
Jean Asselborn
Luxembourg foreign minister
After weeks of indecision, the European Union voted to distribute 120,000 asylum seekers among member states, a plan meant to display unity in the face of the largest movement of refugees on the Continent since World War II.
Instead, the decision, forced through by a majority vote over bitter objections from four eastern members, did as much to underline the bloc’s widening cleavages, even over a modest step that barely addresses the crisis.
Nearly half a million migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe this year, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a number that is only expected to rise.
The crisis has tested the limits of Europe’s ability to forge consensus on one of the most divisive issues to confront the union since the fall of communism. It has set Right-wing nationalist and populist politicians against Pan-European humanitarians.
‘‘We would have preferred to have adoption by consensus, but we did not manage to achieve that,’’ Jean Asselborn, the foreign minister of Luxembourg, said after a meeting of home affairs and interior ministers.
Leaders from across the 28-member bloc will meet in Brussels for further discussions.
Asselborn said even countries that voted against the distribution of asylum seekers the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia must comply. ‘‘I have no doubt they will implement these decisions fully,’’ he said.
But with the prime minister of Slovakia threatening to defy the plan, the outcome was more than an example of the bloc’s inability to co-ordinate its policies. The response to the refugee crisis so far has raised profound questions about a failure of European principles, a trembling of the pillars on which the bloc was founded more than 20 years ago.
The migrant crisis ‘‘risks bursting the EU at its weak seams,’’ said Stefano Stefanini, a former senior Italian ambassador, now based in Brussels. ‘‘It’s more dangerous than the Greek drama and more serious than the euro, because it challenges fundamental European accomplishments and beliefs.’’