European Union approves
plan to relocate 120,000 refugees across Europe, 9/22/15, FoxNews.com
European Union
interior ministers meeting in Brussels Tuesday approved a plan to relocate
120,000 refugees across Europe amid heightened tensions amongst member nations
over the crisis.
Some nations --
including the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia -- voted against
the plan, Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec said on Twitter, according to Sky News. "We will soon
realize that the emperor has no clothes,” Chovanec said. “Common sense lost
today." The Czech
government earlier warned that any attempt to approve a relocation plan would
backfire for the EU, and could end in “big ridicule” for its members and
officials.
But a Twitter post
from the Luxembourg mission to the European Union said the decision was adopted
by a "large majority" of the EU's 28 member states. Luxembourg
currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU, and presided over Tuesday's
meeting of interior and justice ministers in Brussels, Belgium.
German Interior
Minister Thomas de Maiziere said his country would take more than 30,000
people. "We are doing
this out of solidarity and responsibility, but also in our own interest,"
he said. "At the moment, something like 50 percent of those who are
arriving in Greece are coming to Germany. With a quota of 26 percent, fewer of
this group would come."
De Maziere said the
deal also aims to cut "secondary migration" in which people move from
one country to another within Europe. He said that, "if people are
distributed in Europe, then they can't choose what country they go to. They
have to stay in the country they were distributed to."
While the ministers
talked in Brussels, migrants scuffled with police at a transit camp in Croatia,
and nations in southeast Europe scolded and threatened each other as the
unrelenting flow of asylum-seekers raised diplomatic tensions to a boiling
point.
The United Nations'
refugee agency said the next few days may be the last chance for a coherent
European response as hundreds of thousands flow from war-torn areas in the
Middle East, Africa and Asia to Europe.
The U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees warned that the proposal on the table isn't enough to
stabilize the situation, because 477,906 people have already entered Europe by
sea this year. It urged the EU to quickly set up facilities in Greece, where
tens of thousands have arrived after making the hazardous sea crossing from
Turkey.
This may be
"the last opportunity for a coherent European response," said Melissa
Fleming, a spokeswoman for UNHCR. When compared to the 4 million refugees being
sheltered in Turkey, Lebanon and impoverished Jordan, the numbers seem paltry
for a major world trading power with a population of 500 million. But an
estimated 3,000-4,000 people arrive in Greece each day. Many plan to move north
to set up home in Germany, bringing yet more pressure to overburdened borders
as they go.
Meanwhile, Croatia
started letting in trucks across its border with Serbia Tuesday after Serbia's
prime minister gave the European Union a deadline to persuade Croatia to resume
all cargo traffic that was halted after a surge of refugees over their mutual
frontier. Aleksandar Vucic said Tuesday that Croatia's closure of the main
border crossing for cargo trucks early Monday is "a scandal of
international proportions."
Croatian media said
that only trucks loaded with foodstuffs would be allowed to cross. Serbian media
said that all trucks that have been stranded on the Serbian side of the border
are going through.
Landlocked Serbia
has said it is losing millions of dollars a day because of the blockade. Croatia,
which has last week closed all but one border crossing with Serbia, wants to
pressure Serbia to stop sending the refugees toward Croatian borders and rather
channel them further north to Hungary. More than 30,000 refugees have crossed
from Serbia to Croatia since Hungary closed its borders a week ago.
The Associated
Press contributed to this report.
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2015/09/22/european-union-approves-plan-to-relocate-120000-refugees-across-europe/
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