On Monday, the heads of the EU interior ministries pledged to redistribute over 32,000 refugees from the Middle East and Africa throughout the European Union and to relocate to the bloc a further 22,000 or more asylum seekers, during a meeting in Brussels.
In mid-June, EU leaders rejected a plan, proposed by the European Commission, to relocate some 40,000 asylum seekers that had arrived to Italy and Greece, since it presupposed an emergency mandatory migrant quota system.
The European Union is struggling with an acute influx of refugees, crossing the Mediterranean Sea to escape economic hardship and warfare at home.
Since the beginning of 2015, some 153,000 undocumented migrants have been detected at Europe’s external frontiers, the EU’s border agency Frontex said in late June.
