Refugee crisisEU emergency summit tonight to approve contentious refugee quotas deal

EU leaders are preparing for an acrimonious summit this evening in Brussels in which the fractious EU will try, yet again, to come up with a cohesive approach to the continent’s refugee crisis. Yesterday, EU governments forced through a contentious agreement to impose mandatory refugee quotas on the twenty-eight member states to accept a total of 120,000 refugees.

The interior ministers of the EU member states yesterday reached the agreement on sharing the 120,000 refugees in order to avoid fights and squabble during today’s emergency summit.

The New York Times reports that the summit will deal with issues such as faster screening and fingerprinting of people arriving on the EU’s southern borders and helping neighboring countries in the Balkans and the Middle East, especially Turkey, to stop people heading for the EU.

The policies likely to be adopted in the summit will require substantial increases in resources and staffing for EU police and border agencies, and the assumption by these agencies of many responsibilities currently residing with national authorities.

EU summit decisions must be unanimous under EU rules, while ministerial level decisions may be approved by a simple majority.

Donald Tusk, the president of the European council, said the EU had failed to meet the challenge of the refugee crisis. In a letter to EU leaders, he wrote: “There is a long list of issues where we could blame one another, but it will not help us in finding a common solution. Today we must absolutely work out policies that we can implement in order to help each other.”

As was expected, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia on Tuesday voted against a mandatory quota, while Poland, in a surprise move, abandoned its regional allies and backed a decision pushed by Germany and France.

The defeated four countries did not hide their bitterness over what they described as Western — especially German — bullying. Slovakian and Czech politicians were vociferous in their criticism of a move they claim will alter the fabric of European society, though on Wednesday the Czech government said it was not likely to challenge the quotas decision.

The Slovakian prime minister, Robert Fico, however, vowed to bring a legal complaint at an EU court in Luxembourg. “We won’t implement this decision because we think it can’t work,” Fico said, adding: “We always rejected it as nonsense.”

Frans Timmermans, the EU commission vice-president, urged the dissenting central European member states to respect the EU’s decision. “In the European Union, a treaty-based organization, a decision is a decision regardless of the way you voted,” he said. “The decision is legal, it’s valid and it binds all members.”

In the meantime, the border dispute between Serbia and Croatia is intensifying. On Monday, Croatia began blocking cargo trucks from Serbia from entering Croatia after Serbia, last week, began directing flows of immigrants toward the Croatian border.

More than 30,000 migrants have entered Croatia from Serbia since Tuesday last week, when Hungary barred their entry to the EU by erecting a metal fence along its southern border with Serbia.

Croatia says it cannot cope with the numbers, saying Serbia should also send people to Hungary and Romania.

The UN says almost 480,000 people have arrived by boat in Europe so far this year.