Battle looms in EU over migrant quotas
Some nations balk at plan to relocate 160,000 refugees
BRUSSELS — The European Union implored its member countries Wednesday to better share the burden of refugees flooding the continent, but the numbers involved were small compared with the half-million who have already arrived and the hundreds of thousands more on their way.
With Syrians, Eritreans and Afghans often hoping to settle in wealthy nations like Germany and Sweden, the EU is struggling find a more equitable solution that would also send a fair share of refugees to less-desirable and less-welcoming places such as Slovakia and the Baltics.
Hours after EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said Europe had a historic duty to act and relocate 160,000 who have arrived in overwhelmed Hungary, Greece and Italy, a number of Eastern European and Baltic states vowed to reject the imposition of any kind of quotas from Brussels.
The plan is a drop in the ocean for an economic power like the EU, where a half-billion people live, compared with efforts by Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, which are hosting more than 4 million refugees, mostly from Syria.
But despite the troubling scenes of drowned children on beaches, or thousands of people running at razor-wire fences or crammed into buses and trains, the 28 nations simply cannot agree on modest proposals, let alone profound ways to tackle Europe’s biggest refugee emergency since World War II.
With battle lines drawn, the scene is set for an ugly confrontation when EU interior ministers meet Sept. 14.
“If all the focus is on redistributing quotas of refugees around Europe, that won’t solve the problem, and it actually sends a message that it is a good idea to get on a boat and make that perilous journey,” British Prime Minister David Cameron told lawmakers in London.
In the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Juncker said that now is the time for action because “the refugee crisis will not simply go away.” He underlined that 500,000 migrants have entered Europe this year, many from Syria and Libya.
“Imagine for a second it were you, your child in your arms, the world you knew torn apart around you,” Juncker said. “There is no wall you would not climb, no sea you would not sail, no border you would not cross.”
The Commission’s new plan involves sharing 120,000 refugees from Greece, Italy and Hungary among 22 member states, on top of a proposal the EU’s executive made in May to share 40,000 refugees from just Greece and Italy.
Britain, Ireland and Denmark are not required to take part. Greece, Italy and Hungary are too overwhelmed to participate.
Despite the urgency, the EU’s first refugee plan never won full support, and only about 32,000 refugees have been allocated. Hungary was among the countries to reject it.
According to the International Organization for Migration, more than 378,000 people have entered Europe this year, including over 256,000 crossing the sea to Greece and nearly 120,000 braving the Mediterranean to reach Italy.
Hungary estimates that more than 160,000 have crossed its borders alone this year. The U.N. refugee agency warned Tuesday that 42,000 could arrive there in the next 10 days.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel backed the new immigration plan and also called for it to be made compulsory.
“We need a binding agreement on a binding distribution of refugees among all member states, according to fair criteria,” Merkel said.