EU leaders get together for emergency summit in Brussels to solve refuge crisis
EU leaders are going to meet on Wednesday for an emergency meeting on the migrant crisis. The summit will be held in Brussels where leaders will try to come to a unanimous policy to deal with the refugee crisis.
Interior ministers finalised a deal on Tuesday to relocate 120,000 refugees. Under the deal, EU countries have to take a share of new refugees from frontline countries like Italy and Greece.
While some European countries like Romania, Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic strongly opposed the deal, it was passed by a majority vote. Slovakia announced on Wednesday that it would legally challenge the plan to share the refugees.
According to Luxembourg's Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, the plan was passed despite opposition since it was an “emergency situation.” He said Europe would have been more divided if it was not done.
EU President Donald Tusk sent a letter to prime ministers and presidents of member states on dealing with the ongoing crisis. “There is a long list of issues where we could blame one another, but it will not help us in finding a common solution,” Al Jazeera quoted Tusk who added that the EU “must absolutely work out policies that we can implement in order to help each other.”
The European Commission gave warnings to 19 members over breaches to asylum rules.
British Prime Minister David Cameron held talks with French President Francois Hollande on the eve of the summit. According to a Downing Street spokesman, the national leaders agreed to do more to migrants with no genuine claim for asylum.
According to the BBC, the migration crisis was heightened on Wednesday when 44,000 migrants had reportedly arrived in Croatia, with 8,750 arrivals on Monday itself. The migrants moved to Croatia after Hungary had built a fence along its border with Serbia last week.
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