The European Union executive is preparing for a new clash over refugees with national governments, especially in eastern Europe, after officials gave details on Monday of how many it would ask each of them to accommodate.
The European Commission will propose national quotas to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers arriving in Greece, Hungary and Italy, with Germany taking in more than 40,000 and France nearly 31,000.
Countries that do not want to take part would be able to make financial contributions to buy their way out of the obligation on a temporary basis.
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker is due to unveil new proposals on Wednesday. EU officials have said he will propose adding 120,000 people to be relocated on top of the 40,000 the Commission previously proposed relocating. The asylum seekers would be distributed under a formula that looks at each EU country’s size, economic strength and past history of taking in migrants. Britain, which has so far kept its doors comparatively tightly closed, has an exemption from European asylum policy and therefore would not be required to take any refugees, as do smaller Ireland and Denmark.
The formula would still require some countries to take more than they had in the past offered to accommodate. Poland has said it might handle about 2,000 people, but the Commission’s new proposal would assign it close to 12,000.
Slovakia has said it does not want to take in Muslims. The three main entry countries—Italy, Greece, and Hungary-- would be exempt from taking in a share of the refugees relocated under the system. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban has been a vocal opponent of national quotas.
The plan would be the biggest move yet on the part of the EU as a whole to tackle a crisis which has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees and economic migrant arrive on its southern shores and eastern borders.
It still will go just a small way towards distributing asylum-seekers across the 28-member bloc, where Germany has far outpaced its neighbours in opening its doors, creating tension with some of its neighbours.
Berlin says convincing its EU partners to do their share is a crucial part of maintaining European solidarity in the face of the continent’s biggest migration crisis since the Balkan wars of the 1990s.
Chancellor Angela Merkel has the firm backing of French President Francois Hollande.
The quota formula, or “distribution key,” is based 40% on receiving countries’ national income, 40% on population, 10% on the unemployment rate and 10% on how many refugees each country was already accommodating before this year’s crisis.