Jean-Claude Juncker,President of the European Commission urged Europe not to be afraid of his ‘bold’ proposals for compulsory quo...
Jean-Claude Juncker,President of the European Commission urged Europe not to be afraid of his ‘bold’ proposals for compulsory quotas for refugees fleeing conflict in Syria and elsewhere.
He delivered his annual State of the Union address on Wednesday, just three days after his mother died, explaining he was honoring his parents' work ethic.
Former Prime Minister of Luxembourg unveiled major plans Wednesday to force the bloc to share 160,000 refugees and ease the pressure on border states from the worst migration crisis since World War II.
With Greece and Hungary struggling to cope, Juncker urged Europe to look to its history and not be afraid of his proposals for compulsory quotas for refugees fleeing conflict in Syria and elsewhere.
But German chancellor Angela Merkel — whose country expects 800,000 asylum claims this year and has said it could take half a million annually over several years — urged Europe to go further, claiming binding quotas were the only way to ensure a “fair” and proportionate sharing of the burden.
Hungry`s Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned last week that the wave of mostly Muslim refugees coming to Europe threatens to undermine the continent`s Christian roots -- an idea rejected by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
"There is no religion, there is no belief, there is no philosophy when it comes to refugees," Juncker said. "We don`t distinguish."
Juncker meanwhile called for a more permanent refugee relocation mechanism "to deal with crisis situations more swiftly in the future."The European Commission would unveil a major new plan for legal migration to the EU in early 2016, in a bid to stem the number of refugees braving danger to come to the continent, he said.
Under the EU plan, Germany would take more than 31,000 migrants, France 24,000 and Spain almost 15,000.
The migrants’ plight has touched hearts around the world, spurred especially by pictures last week of three-year-old Syrian Aylan Kurdi, whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach.
On the Greek holiday island of Lesbos, where around 20,000 people have been waiting in squalid conditions to travel to the mainland, a new processing centre was set up on Monday which processed some 14,000 people in just over 24 hours.
Tensions were also high on other Aegean islands where another 10,000 are stuck waiting to reach the mainland.
More than 380,000 people have arrived in Europe by sea this year, figures from the UN’s refugee agency UNHCR showed on Tuesday, including close to 260,000 in Greece and 121,000 in Italy.
As Australia agreed to up its quota, offers of help also came in from south America, with Venezuela saying it would accept 20,000, Brazil declaring migrants would be welcomed with “open arms” and Chile also pledging to take “a large number”.
