European Union interior ministers have reached a deal to
share out 120,000 refugees across the EU bloc after holding an emergency
meeting.
The agreement was reached in Brussels on Tuesday despite fierce
opposition from some central and eastern states that deepened rifts over
Europe's worst refugee crisis in decades.
French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the plan had been approved by a "crushing majority".
"This decision is testament to the capacity of Europe to take responsibility and progress," he said.
Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia all voted against
the plan to share the intake of refugees, while Finland abstained.
"We will soon realise that the emperor has no clothes. Common sense
lost today," Czech Interior Minister Milan Chovanec tweeted after the
vote.
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said pushing through the quota
system had "nonsensically" caused a deep rift over a highly sensitive
issue and that, "as long as I am prime minister", Slovakia would not
implement a quota.
The deal mandates that countries in the EU take a share of thousands
of new arrivals of refugees from the Middle East, Asia and Africa,
who are currently in frontline EU states like Greece and Italy.
The ministers were under pressure to reach a deal that could be
ratified by EU leaders at a crisis summit on Wednesday, but in a rare
step for a bloc that is keen to show a united front, the agreement was
by a majority vote instead of unanmity.
"Decision on relocation for 120,000 persons adopted today, by
large majority of member states," the EU's Luxembourg presidency said in
a tweet.
In Pictures: A window into a desperate journey
Officials said the relocation deal covered 66,000 refugees who would
be moved from Greece and Italy plus another 54,000 who had previously
been earmarked to be relocated from Hungary before it refused to back
the plan.
Hungary and its eastern partners oppose the plan because they say
Brussels has no right to make them take in thousands of people, and to
do so amounts to a violation of their national sovereignty.
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Macedonian authorities beat refugees trying to cross border
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"It's not a perfect deal but it's one that will allow us to start
working on the problems we're facing," an EU diplomat told the AFP news
agency.
The agreement came two days after Hungary gave its army and police
sweeping new powers to keep refugees out, as the country's Prime
Minister Viktor Orban warned that Europe was being "overrun".
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.
In Hungary, new legislation allowed the army on Monday to
use coercive weapons designed to cause bodily harm, although in a
non-lethal way, "unless it cannot be avoided".
The police, meanwhile, will be able to enter private homes for the
purpose of carrying out a search for refugees who entered the country
illegally, among other new powers.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
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