EU holds emergency summit on refugees
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EU holds emergency summit on refugees
EU leaders were to stage an emergency summit yesterday on boosting aid and tightening borders to tackle the migration crisis, but a growing east-west split over a deal to relocate 120,000 refugees threatened to poison the talks.
Hours before the meeting, Hungary’s prime minister rejected Angela Merkel’s “moral imperialism” over the worst such crisis since World War II while Slovakia said it would dispute the refugee quota deal in court.
Despite Croatia reporting a record number of arrivals and countries across the region feeling the strain from refugees from war zones like Syria and Afghanistan, EU leaders appeared as divided as ever.
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia voted against the relocation plan, arguing the EU has no right to override national sovereignty and make them accept people from overwhelmed frontline states.
“The most important thing is that there should be no moral imperialism,” Hungary’s hardline leader Viktor Orban said during a visit to the southern German state of Bavaria when asked what he expected from Merkel.
Before the summit, Donald Tusk, head of the European Council, called for an end to “the cycle of mutual recriminations and misunderstandings” fuelling the split between the EU’s richer west and poorer former communist east.
“The most urgent question we should ask ourselves tonight is how to regain control of our external borders,” Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, told reporters.
“The conflicts in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq, will not end anytime soon,” he said. “This means today we’re talking about millions of potential refugees trying to reach Europe, not thousands.”
Source: AFP
