(MENAFN- Arab Times) EU Commission chief Jean- Claude Juncker unveiled major plans Wednesday to force the bloc to share 160,000 refugees and ease the burden on border states from the worst migration crisis since World War II. As pressure mounted for an emergency EU summit on the issue, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the bloc to go even further, calling for a distribution of migrants with no limits on actual numbers.
Underscoring the difficulties transit countries such as Hungary face, at least 400 desperate migrants broke through police lines at the flashpoint town of Roszke on Hungary's southern border with Serbia, yelling "No camp!" as they scattered in all directions. With Greece, Hungary and Italy struggling to cope, Juncker urged Europe to look to its history and not be afraid of his "bold" proposals for compulsory quotas for a surge in mainly Syrian refugees fleeing conflict. "Now is not the time to take fright, it is time for bold, determined action for the European Union," Juncker said in his first EU State of the Union speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
He also warned member states against making religious distinctions when deciding to admit refugees. Merkel - whose country expects 800,000 asylum claims this year and has said it could take half a million annually over several years - said Europe needed a binding long-term deal for the "fair" sharing of the burden. "We need a binding agreement on the binding distribution of refugees according to fair criteria between member states," Merkel told the Bundestag. "We cannot just fix a ceiling and say I don't care about anything above that." The migrants' plight has touched hearts around the world, spurred especially by pictures last week of threeyear- old Syrian Aylan Kurdi, whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach.
In response to appeals for help from an increasingly-strained Europe, Australia said it would take an additional 12,000 refugees from the Syria and Iraq conflicts and several South American countries also agreed to help. But in Europe, mandatory quotas have faced stiff opposition, especially from eastern EU states such as Hungary, which have seen a huge surge in migrants travelling via the Western Balkans to get to Germany. As Merkel and Juncker were speaking, hundreds of migrants broke through police lines on the Hungary-Serbia border. Some ran towards a nearby motorway heading to Budapest which police then closed in the latest confrontation with thousands of migrants pouring across the frontier. "We don't want to live any longer in the camps in Hungary or elsewhere, the conditions are horrible. It's too cold and everything is dirty, and it smells bad," said a young man from Damascus. A Hungarian TV camerawoman was fired Tuesday after footage appeared to show her kicking and tripping up migrants, including children, as they ran away from a police line during disturbances at Roszke. Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said the country does not want more Muslim migrants. Austrian officials said 6,000 migrants coming from Hungary passed through Vienna's Westbahnhof train station in the 24 hours to Wednesday morning, with almost all travelling on to Germany. Juncker urged EU interior ministers - who are meeting next Monday - to back his new plan for the relocation of 120,000 refugees from Hungary, Greece, and Italy, and a plan first floated in May to relocate 40,000 others in Italy and Greece.
He also announced the setting up of a 1.8 billion-euro ($2.0 billion) fund to help desperately poor sub-Saharan countries, the source of many migrants. Berlin said meanwhile it was open to a special EU refugee summit after the ministers' meeting and ahead of the next scheduled EU summit on October 14. Under the Commission plan, Germany would take more than 31,000 migrants, France 24,000 and Spain almost 15,000. France has already agreed to take that number, while Britain has said it would take 20,000 over five years, although they would come from refugee camps on the Syrian border and not other EU states. EU president Donald Tusk warned Monday of an "exodus" that would likely last "for many years".
On the Greek holiday island of Lesbos, where around 20,000 people have been waiting in squalid conditions to travel to the mainland, a new processing centre was set up on Monday which handled some 14,000 people in just over 24 hours. Here are the figures released today by the Commission for the 120,000. In total 54,000 will be moved from Hungary, 50,400 from Greece and 15,600 from Italy: Austria: 3,640; Belgium: 4,564; Bulgaria: 1,600; Croatia: 1,064; Cyprus: 274; Czech Republic: 2,978; Estonia: 373; Finland: 2,398; France: 24,031; Germany: 31,443; Latvia: 526; Lithuania: 780; Luxembourg: 440; Malta: 133; Netherlands: 7,214; Poland: 9,287; Portugal: 3,074; Romania: 4,646; Slovakia: 1,502; Slovenia: 631; Spain: 14,931; Sweden: 4,469 Under EU treaties, Britain and Ireland can decide to participate in the plan if they choose, while Denmark has an opt-out without the possibility to take part. The quotas are worked out according to the country's GDP (40 percent), population (40 percent), unemployment rate (10 percent) and already-processed asylum applications.
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