September 9 (SeeNews) - The European Commission said on Wednesday it plans to relocate more than 7,900 refugees from Italy, Greece and Hungary to Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia as part of a strategy to solve the refugee crisis in Europe.
The new proposal will come on top of a proposal made in May for the relocation of 3,419 refugees from Italy and Greece to those four EU-member states.
The quotas distributed to each country are based on objective and quantifiable criteria including country's population, gross domestic product, average number of past asylum applications and unemployment rate, the European Commission said in a press release.
The Commission also proposed to add Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Kosovo, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey to a list of countries of origin considered to be "safe", which would allow for swifter processing of asylum applications from candidates originating from these countries.
"Europe is a continent where nearly everyone has at one time been a refugee. We Europeans should know and should never forget why giving refuge and complying with the fundamental right to asylum is so important," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said in the statement. "It is time we started putting in place the building blocks of a truly European migration policy, as we called for back in May."
"The measures we are proposing today will ensure that people in clear need of international protection are relocated swiftly after arriving – not just now but also for any crisis in the future," Juncker also said. "If ever European solidarity needed to manifest itself, it is on the question of the refugee crisis. It is time to show collective courage and deliver this European response now.”
The Commission also proposed a structured solidarity mechanism which it can trigger any time to help any EU-member state experiencing a crisis situation and extreme pressure on its asylum system as a result of a large and disproportionate inflow of third country nationals. Such future emergency situations would be defined by the Commission based on the number of asylum applications in the last six months, per capita as well as the number of irregular border crossings in the last six months.
The next opportunity for EU-member states to discuss and adopt the package of measures proposed by the Commission will be September 14.
The countries in Southeast Europe, Macedonia and Serbia in particular, have been dealing with an unprecedented number of transiting refugees and migrants in the past months. Most cross into Macedonia from Greece and then try to board a train to Kumanovo, on the border with Serbia, from where they go north to Hungary. In late August Macedonia's government declared a state of emergency in two regions at its southern and northern borders in an attempt to deal with the refugee crisis. An estimated 44,000 migrants have crossed through Macedonia in the past two months, the Macedonian government said back then.
Following is a table showing the number of refugees distributed in each country:
|
Italy |
Greece |
Hungary |
Total by country |
Bulgaria |
551 |
901 |
720 |
2,172 |
Croatia |
586 |
746 |
479 |
1,811 |
Romania |
1,627 |
2,633 |
2,091 |
6,351 |
Slovenia |
379 |
363 |
284 |
1,026 |
Total for all 4 EU-members |
3,143 |
4,643 |
3,574 |
11,360 |