(MENAFN- Jordan News Agency) EU ministers late Monday failed to reach agreement on a quota plan to share the burden of a flood of refugees as Hungary closed the main migrant crossing with Serbia and other European countries imposed border checks.
Following a prolonged meeting of justice minister in Brussels, member states failed to back a refugee relocation plan proposed by the European Commission last week. There was significant opposition from a number of central and east European countries to the idea of mandatory quotas.
Ministers will revisit the issue on October 8th but the development is a blow to European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker's proposal to introduce the quotas, a move expected to set an important precedent for EU asylum policy.
Hopes of a unanimous deal collapsed in the face of opposition from Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania at the crisis meeting in Brussels, officials said.
With Europe's 20-year-old Schengen passport-free zone creaking under the pressure, Austria and Slovakia said they would follow economic powerhouse Germany's lead in reinstating frontier controls to deal with the flow of people.
Poland said it was considering similar steps while the Netherlands said it would have "more patrols" on its frontiers.
Long traffic jams built up on the Germany-Austria border and refugees were left stranded on non-EU Serbia's side of the frontier with Hungary in the latest chaotic scenes from the biggest such crisis since World War II.
But the crisis is moving faster than the EU can handle, with more than 430,000 people having crossed the Mediterranean to Europe so far this year, 2,748 dying, and more coming every day.
Rights group Amnesty International criticised the lack of agreement, saying EU ministers had "once again dismally failed to show collective leadership and respond to the global refugee crisis".
Hungary has vowed to begin arresting illegal migrants from Tuesday, with police fencing off a gap in the razor-wire barrier with Serbia that hardline Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government is racing to complete.
Hungary is on the front line of Europe's migrant crisis, with almost 200,000 people travelling up from Greece through the western Balkans and entering the country this year, most of them seeking to travel on to Germany.
But other countries are now feeling the strain too, and Germany shocked its EU partners on Sunday when it admitted that it had to reinstate border controls eliminated under Schengen in the late 1990s to cope with the influx.
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