Brussels: The latest in what is the world's severe-most migration crisis, the EU executive has drawn a new set of national quotas under which Germany will take in more than 40,000 and France 30,000 of the total 160,000 asylum seekers, it feels should relocate from Italy, Greece and Hungary. Countries that do not want to take part would be allowed to make financial contributions to temporarily buy their way out of the obligation.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is yet to unveil new proposals. EU officials said he would propose adding 120,000 people to be relocated on top of a group of 40,000 the Commission previously proposed relocating. The initial proposal to relocate refugees arriving in Italy and Greece would also be expanded to include refugees arriving in Hungary. This would be the EU's biggest move until now, as a whole to tackle the crisis which has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees and economic migrant arrive on its southern shores and eastern borders.
The redistribution program would be small as compared to the 800,000 asylum seekers Germany itself plans to receive this year. And Germany would still take a quarter of those redistributed. However, Berlin says convincing its EU partners to do their share is a crucial part of maintaining European solidarity in the face of the continent's biggest migration crisis since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. While Berlin and Paris have supported the scheme to oblige states to take in people to process their claims for refugee status, poorer eastern countries clearly opposed such schemes.
The asylum seekers would be distributed under a formula that will look at each EU country's size, economic strength and past history of taking in migrants. Britain, which has so far kept its doors comparatively tightly closed, has an exemption from European asylum policy and therefore would not be required to take any refugees, as do smaller Ireland and Denmark. The quota formula, or 'distribution key', is based 40-per cent on receiving countries' national income, 40 per cent on population, 10 per cent on the unemployment rate and 10 per cent on how many refugees each country was already accommodating before this year's crisis.
