The refugees crisis: European Union postpones again a decision on quotas for 120000

Ministers have agreed to relocate a further 120,000 refugees around Europe.

“Their asylum claims are to be processed quickly and those who fail are to be deported promptly”, one ministerial document said.

Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg’s foreign minister, warned: “It is premature for the Council to take a decision today”.

But when Asselborn addressed the press some eight hours later, he could not communicate any such concrete steps.

There was an agreement also to select 40,000 Syrians, Eritreans, and Iraqis from Italy and Greece who qualify as refugees and begin resettling them in a number of countries, including 600 in Ireland that Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said should begin to arrive before the end of the year.

“The appalling conditions and chaos facing refugees and Europe as a whole show that there was no real preparation at Europe’s borders and little respect for the existing EU Asylum Reception Directive”.

Faced with already high unemployment rates, slow to no-growth economies, and overburdened social spending programs in many cases, European countries are not in the kind of economic shape to support an influx of destitute migrants. However, he said there was a “large majority” in favour of the Commission’s redistributions plans.

European Union nations agreed Monday on an initial relocation of 32,000 refugees from Italy and Greece, primary gateways for a flood of migrants pouring into Europe. “It was not only us or the Czech Republic, but other countries as well”, he was quoted as saying by the Czech news agency CTK.

According to de Maiziere and the Luxemburg presidency, ministers might decide on this issue at their next meeting on October 8. I did not want to even imagine feeling desperate enough to take my children on a boat they might never leave alive.

In Macedonia, more teams of volunteers from the United Nations and government special police forces guide them onto buses or onto rundown electric trains or cramped taxis headed for the country’s northern border with Serbia.

The drowning of hundreds of migrants in April, the discovery of a truckload of dead refugees in Austria last month and the recent front-page photo of a dead 3-year old immigrant in Turkey underscore the fact that political dithering means additional lives lost.

He added that “time is of the essence” and that “a common problem requires a common solution”.

European Union interior ministers meet for emergency migration talks on September 14, a day after Germany reintroduced controls at its border with Austria to stem the continuing flow of refugees.