EU Solidarity has splintered widely as Ministers Ram Through Refugee Quota Plan over the objections of numerous countries.
EU interior ministers on Tuesday imposed a plan to relocate 120,000 refugees across the EU, outvoting four eastern European countries strongly opposed to the scheme.
The use of majority voting to push ahead with the burden-sharing scheme – regarded as politically unacceptable in some capitals – is a rare move in a bloc that typically acts by consensus on sensitive issues. It is certain to amplify tensions over the migrants crisis.
Slovakia’s Robert Fico was defiant, saying he would not be bound by the decision. “As long as I am prime minister, mandatory quotas will not be implemented on Slovak territory,” he told MPs in Bratislava.
Milan Chovanec, the Czech interior minister, tweeted that the policy would not work: ‘Soon we will find out that the emperor has no clothes. Reason lost today.’
EU diplomats said Hungary, Slovakia, Romania and the Czech Republic voted against the plan, with Finland abstaining, but they were unable to stop its proponents, led by Germany and France.
Syrian, Iraqi and Eritrean asylum-seekers would qualify for the programme, but the logistics of how they will be distributed are still to be worked out.
Jean Asselborn, the Luxembourg minister who chaired the meeting, said ministers ‘would have preferred to have an agreement by consensus’, but said the EU expected the objectors to abide by the redistribution plan, as required under EU law.
This post was published at Global Economic Analysis on September 22, 2015.
Follow on Twitter
Recent Comments