MADRID (Sputnik) — Spain is going to take in some 1,000 refugees by the end of summer, acting Interior Minister of Spain Jorge Fernandez Diaz said Friday.
"We would like a thousand refugees from Greece, Italy, Lebanon and Turkey to arrive to Spain by the end of summer," Diaz told reporters adding that this move will make Spain the country which received the largest number of refugees according to the EU quota.
To date, Spain has only taken in 124 refugees under the EU quota out of 17,000 it is obliged to take in by the end of 2017. Another 285 people from a refugee camp in Lebanon will arrive in June.
Fernandez Diaz also said that in 2015 Spain accepted some 20,000 asylum seekers, mostly from Syria, Ukraine and Palestine. Similar number of requests, mainly from Syria, Ukraine and Venezuela, are expected this year.
