EU leaders will meet in Brussels next Wednesday in an attempt to forge a common approach to the refugee crisis, amid reports that the European Commission’s mandatory relocation scheme for refugees could be repackaged as a voluntary scheme.
European Council president Donald Tusk has summoned EU leaders to a summit beginning at 6pm next Wednesday, a day after EU justice and home affairs ministers meet to consider the European Commission’s proposal to redistribute 120,000 refugees who have arrived in Hungary, Italy and Greece, across the European Union.
Member states failed to reach agreement on the proposal in Brussels last Monday, fuelling expectations that a compromise proposal could be on the table. A European Commission spokesman insisted that the original proposal for a mandatory relocation plan was still on the table.
“Our proposal for a mandatory relocation scheme benefiting 120,000 refugees in clear need of international protection remains on the table,” a commission spokeswoman said, adding that the EU’s executive arm would “continue defending this proposal in the legislative process”.
EU commissioner for migration Dimitris Avramopoulos appeared to hint on Wednesday that a compromise could be in the offing, however. “Our objective is to preserve the unity of Europe.”
Diplomats are working behind the scenes to secure consensus ahead of next week’s meeting as the EU struggles to respond to the biggest refugee crisis on the continent since the second World War.
As migrants and refugees made their way towards the European Union through Croatia and Slovenia, the Austrian and Croatian leaders promised “close co-operation . . . in the current challenge”.
Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann met his Croatian colleague Zoran Milanovic for more than an hour to discuss the wave of people passing through Croatia on to Slovenia and into Austria.
A spokeswoman for Mr Faymann said they agreed that the EU must continue to implement existing rules and provisions, in particular the Dublin regulations. “The refugee question is a pan-European challenge that doesn’t just affect individual countries,” she said.
Following Hungary’s decision to close its border to Serbia, Croatian police said that more people were using a detour through its territory than initially expected. At least 7,300 have already arrived with a further 4,000 expected in the coming days. With Slovenia next in line, Mr Faymann called for “new and better rules” to master the growing crisis.
After talks in Ljubljana, Slovenian prime minister Miro Cerar said his country would stick to the Schengen rules of border-free travel. His government has vowed to accept asylum requests without creating a “corridor” for refugees to transit to Austria.
Meanwhile, the head of the Liberal group in the European Parliament, Guy Verhofstadt, called on the European Council president to put a “comprehensive asylum and migration package” on the agenda at next week’s summit.
While welcoming the announcement of the summit as “better late than never”, he said leaders needed to bring forward a number of policies, including a commitment to revisit the Dublin regulation, an increase of the EU’s budget to the UNHCR and the strengthening of Frontex, the EU’s border control agency.
