MOSCOW (Sputnik) — The European Union failed to show solidarity on the issue of refugee relocation, UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Filippo Grandi said Friday.
"On the matter of [refugee] registration and relocation European cooperation and solidarity completely failed," he said in an interview with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.
He added that the majority of EU countries are not taking part in solving this problem and instead are happy to shove responsibility onto Germany and a few other countries in the bloc.
Grandi also warned against closing national borders within the European Union, as this would in effect leave Greece to deal with the hundreds of thousands of refugees alone.
The EU border agency Frontex detected over 1.83 million illegal border crossings in 2015, in contrast to some 283,000 in 2014.
In response to the growing number of migrants reaching their territories, some European states, such as Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovenia, have built fences, while other states, including Austria and Germany, have toughened their migration policies.
