European leaders are meeting to ratify a deeply divisive quota system that will see refugees rehomed across the EU – whether member states like it or not.
The mandatory relocation scheme for 120,000 refugees voted through by a majority of interior ministers on Tuesday has split the Europe along east-west, new-old member lines.
Diplomats have described the crisis as among the worst ever faced by the bloc. “This is the worst I've ever known things in more than 20 years dealing with European affairs,” one senior official told Reuters yesterday.
Four eastern European countries — the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary — voted against the plan after attempts to reach a consensus failed. Poland, which met with the dissenting nations at the start of the week, ended up voted in favour of the resolution. Finland elected to abstain.
#Poland supports relocation scheme for the #refugees, breaks away from the coalition of mean-spirited V4 plus #Romania
— Marcin Zaborowski (@MaZaborowski) September 23, 2015
How did the rebel nations react to vote?
Observers say it is extremely unusual for the EU to vote on an issue which involves national sovereignty, rather than reach a unanimous decision.
It has been met with furious reactions within the countries that voted against it, with Slovakia’s prime minister Robert Fico describing it as a “diktat”.
His Czech counterpart, Bohuslav Sobotka, said it was “a bad decision, and the Czech Republic did all it could to block it”. The Czech interior minister, Milan Chovanec, wrote on Twitter: “Very soon we will realise the emperor has no clothes. Today was a defeat for common sense.”
Velmi brzy zjistíme, že císař je nahý. Dnes prohrál zdravý rozum! :-(
— Milan Chovanec (@Milan_Chovanec) September 22, 2015
A spokesperson for the Hungarian government questioned how the quotas would work, saying: “We believe it will be impossible to keep people assigned to, say, Slovakia if they want to go to Germany. How do you keep people in one country if they want to go join their relatives who live in another EU country or want the more favourable social welfare benefits in that country?”
Romania, which will be required to take the greatest number of refugees of the four, has previously said it would be incapable of integrating large numbers of foreigners. President Klaus Iohannis insisted his country was not “xenophobic, autistic or separatist”. The refugee crisis - in pictures
Will they accept their quota?
Of an initial tranche of 66,000 refugees to be relocated immediately as part of the deal agreed on Tuesday, 2,475 will go to Romania – almost 700 more than it said was the maximum it could take.
Czech Republic will be required to take 1591, Hungary 1294 and Slovakia 802.
Despite being asked to take less than 1,000 people, Slovakia’s leader Mr Fico said he would not accept the terms and would rather breach the order than “respected this diktat of the majority”.
Hungary said it would accept the terms, if seemingly reluctantly. It remains unclear whether Czech and Romanian officials will continue to resist the scheme.
Hungary is building a new fence along its border with Croatia in an effort to keep refugees out
What happens if they don’t?
According to Tuesday’s agreement, the quotas were defined on the basis of each country’s size of economy and population, as well as the average number of asylum applications they tend to receive.
It said the transfer of the first group of applicants was to be completed within two months, with Syrians, Eritreans and Iraqis prioritised.
Countries refusing to accept relocated refugees cannot be made to do so with force. Instead, they face a financial penalty of 0.002 per cent of GDP – in Slovakia’s case, that would be around £1.3 million.
Under EU rules, countries that don’t agree with the policy also have the right to appeal to the European Council.
Clashes between refugees and Hungary’s border police
What does it all mean for the EU?
Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, said at the start of the week that the refugee crisis represented a threat to “the whole of Europe”.
He was speaking about the numbers of people “over-running us”, defending his country’s decision to build a vast razor-wire fence to keep refugees out.
But the more immediate threat to the EU comes from the bitter divisions the quota row has created – or simply exposed.
Gideon Rachman, the Financial Times’ chief foreign affairs commentator, has said the crisis threatens to “unravel the EU”. “For the first time in decades, some of the fundamental achievements and tenets of the EU are under threat,” he said.
Read more:
Hungary: 'Croatia violating international law' over refugee crisis
Hungary deploys soldiers to borders as door slams shut on refugees
Thousands left stranded after Hungary blocked by razor wire
Mary Dejevksy, writing for this paper earlier in September, said the crisis had exposed the EU’s belief that there was no difference between “old” EU members and those that joined in 2004. “That happy conceit has now evaporated,” she said.
And at the end of it all, the UN has said that even the full offer of 120,000 relocations will not come close to solving the crisis as a whole.
After yesterday’s meeting, the German interior minister Thomas de Maiziere admitted there was still a long way to go. He said: “Today is an important building block, but no more than that.”
