European Union Proposes Distribution of 160,000 Refugees

Yeah, that oughta work.

Shoot, Juncker was heckled.

And 120,000? 160,000? What's another 40 thousand or so asylum seekers, meh? We've got room to spare!

At WSJ, "EU’s Juncker Proposes New Refugee Quota Plan as Bloc Struggles to Respond to Migrant Wave":

STRASBOURG, France—A top European Union official on Wednesday proposed redistributing 160,000 refugees across the bloc, but acknowledged that wouldn’t go far enough to address the largest flow of migrants to the continent since the aftermath of World War II.

The EU has sputtered in its attempts to craft a coherent approach to the crisis amid competing national interests and insistence by some countries—particularly in the poorer east—that taking in refugees must be voluntary.

The new plan, which has to be approved by a majority of EU governments, is the second attempt by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to help Greece, Italy and Hungary, the three countries on the front line of the crisis. The plan also seeks to speed up procedures across the bloc to send back migrants who don’t qualify for asylum.

“I do believe that given the gravity of the situation we face, this proposal is quite modest,” Mr. Juncker acknowledged at a news conference, adding that nearly 500,000 people have made their way to Europe in the past year.

But he pointed out that earlier even more modest plans were rejected by EU leaders and that if “we had taken decisions back then, perhaps we would have saved a lot of lives.”

Over the next two years, most EU countries—excluding the U.K., Denmark and Ireland, who have opt-outs from Europe’s common asylum system—would be required to take in a total of 160,000 refugees in hard-hit Italy, Greece and Hungary.

Germany, which is the main destination for migrants entering from those EU border states, is one of the architects of the proposal and hopes to diffuse the stream of people who would try to seek asylum there.

Chancellor Angela Merkel reiterated her call Wednesday for the EU to agree to binding rules, saying Mr. Juncker’s proposal was a “first step of a fair distribution” but more is needed.

According to German government estimates, some 800,000 people are expected to apply for asylum there this year alone.

“It’s not possible to set a limit and to say ‘We don’t care beyond that and it is then an issue for two or three or four countries,” she said. “This must be a European responsibility and only then will all member states care about the causes of migration” and help address conflicts driving people to flee to Europe...

More.

Plus, at Der Spiegel, "A Continent Adrift: Juncker Proposes Fixes to EU's Broken Asylum Policies."