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Syria’s brutal civil war, which has been raging for years, seemed even farther away.

Finland was the only European Union state to abstain from this week’s vote about relocating asylum seekers across the member countries. At the same time, the chancellor emphasized that European standards for accommodation, care and asylum processing must be respected.

But Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who chaired the meeting, said he had “no doubt” opposing countries would implement the measures.

The United Kingdom has opted against taking part in the relocation scheme and has its own plan to resettle migrants directly from Syrian refugee camps.

The issue is dominating Tuesday’s meeting of European Union interior ministers in Brussels.

Meanwhile, a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report – released on Monday -accused the police in Macedonia of violence and ill-treatment of refugees streaming into the country from Greece on their way to northern Europe.

An emergency summit by European Union leaders is also scheduled for Wednesday.

Rather than claiming asylum in the first safe European Union country they reach, most head on toward wealthy northern states.

Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said his “personal initiative” would see “generous” European Union quotas to bring in refugees from crisis-hit regions and spread them around the continent.

Terence Pike, with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Croatia, told CNN that Croatian authorities had been prepared to handle only an influx of 500 migrants and refugees a day.

European interior ministers return to the table in Brussels on Tuesday afternoon for another round of talks on the deeply divisive issue of migration quotas. After last week’s meeting, Luxembourg’s Jean Asselborn, who is minister for immigration and asylum as well as...

The border controls went into force late on Wednesday on the motorway connecting the Czech Republic to the eastern German state of Saxony, spokesman Christian Meinhold said.

On Thursday, Croatia shut seven of eight road border crossings with Serbia after more than 11,000 refugees overwhelmed the frontier over the past two days.

Huge numbers of people heading north from the Mediterranean have created a political crisis in the European Union.

Even if every single ISIS fighter in Syria and Iraq bailed on the movement to become a hidden refugee plan, it would be less than 1% of the 4 million refugees that have fled Syria.