{The European Commission will propose that countries share responsibility for housing thousands of refugees arriving in Europe from across the Mediterranean.}
According to the Times, President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday (13 May) will propose a “mandatory migrant quota system” under which the EU’s 28 member states will share responsibility for migrants during times of emergency, the British newspaper reported.
“To ensure a fair and balanced participation of all member states to this common effort… the EU needs a permanent system for sharing the responsibility for large numbers of refugees and asylum seekers among member states,” the proposal reads, the Times reported on Monday (11 May).
The number of refugees sent to each country would be decided according to a “redistribution key” based on GDP, population size, unemployment rate and past numbers of asylum seekers, it added.
Currently, asylum seekers are the responsibility of the country in which they first arrive, meaning countries close to migrant crossing routes such as Italy, Malta and Greece have complained of shouldering the bulk of Europe’s refugee crisis.
At an EU summit in April, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, whose country, along with Sweden, takes in a large proportion of asylum-seekers, called for a change in the EU’s system of managing asylum claims to better distribute the pressures across the bloc.
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