European Union ministers on Tuesday approved a plan for individual countries in the bloc to accept a share of the hundreds of thousands of refugees seeking asylum on the continent — but only after overruling four former Soviet bloc countries.
The home affairs and interior ministers, meeting in an emergency session here, voted on a plan to apportion 120,000 refugees — still only a small fraction of those flowing into Europe — among members of the European Union.
The dissenters were the ministers representing the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia. Under European law, three of the countries — the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia — would be required to accept migrants against their will, said one European Union diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity shortly after the vote.
The idea behind the plan is to relieve the pressure on front-line nations like Italy and Greece, which migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and African have been flooding.
France and Germany back a compulsory approach to resettling refugees. But a call for the members to share the burden of absorbing the migrants according to the wealth and population of the member countries met with fierce resistance. The squabbling has highlighted the lack of a united European response to one of the worst humanitarian crises in decades.
Source: nytimes.com
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