EU parliament backs refugee relocation plan

That route may soon close when Hungary completes the razor-wire fence it’s building on its 108-mile border with Serbia.

A vote by majority, rather than unanimity, “is legally possible, but politically counterproductive”, an European Union official said.

“We are very grateful to the European Parliament for understanding the urgency of this matter”, European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said in Brussels, according to AFP.

The EU’s migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said Thursday that walls and violence were no solution to the migration crisis.

Germany’s interior minister Thomas de Maiziere said there was “bitterness” over the fact that the vote was not unanimous, and that ministers would have to meet again on the issue, The Local has reported.

It comes as Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s vice chancellor warned that the country is expecting more than 1 million migrants this year, 200,000 higher that the previous estimate of 800,000.

Parliament had to approve the plan but would normally have done so after European Union states had rubber-stamped it.

With Europe’s 20-year-old Schengen passport-free zone creaking under the pressure, Austria and Slovakia said they would follow economic powerhouse Germany’s lead in reinstating frontier controls to deal with the flow of people.

Other measures under consideration are large internment camps for refugees in Italy and Greece, to temporarily accommodate people while they are identified, registered, and finger-printed. Often described sympathetically as unaccompanied minors fleeing gang violence, most of those Central American arrivals were able-bodied, tough young men who left their families in search of better economic opportunities.

“Britain, which has its own borders and the ability to make our own sovereign decisions about this, our approach is to say yes, we are a humanitarian nation with a moral conscience”.

Loekke Rasmussen says the country “cannot open our borders to anyone and everyone”.

“Today’s Council was another step towards establishing a much needed response to the unprecedented situation we find ourselves in”. He didn’t specify where or how the money should be used.

Hungary’s right wing prime minister, Viktor Orban, vowed to push ahead with a controversial border crackdown due to come into force at midnight, amid United Nations claims that his government is transporting migrants from the Serbian border to the Austrian frontier ahead of the change.

Croatian police said Thursday that some 5,650 migrants have come into the country since first groups started arriving early on Wednesday.