The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, looks set for victory in her campaign to press Europe into a new system of sharing refugees after France caved in to a proposed new quotas system and Brussels unveiled plans to quadruple the number of people spread across most of the EU.
In a major policy speech on Europe’s worst migration emergency, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European commission, is to table proposals next Wednesday for the mandatory sharing of 160,000 refugees between 25 of the EU’s 28 countries.
Britain, Ireland and Denmark are exempted from having to take part, but Dublin has already agreed to participate and David Cameron is under increasing pressure for Britain to pull its weight as the migration crisis escalates with scenes of chaos and misery on Europe’s borders.
Berlin and Paris have sought to maintain a common position for weeks, but the French equivocated on the key issue of binding quotas. On Thursday, the president, François Hollande, aligned himself with Merkel’s drive for compulsory EU sharing of refugees.
Merkel announced from Switzerland that both sides had agreed a common platform and Hollande said there should be a “permanent and obligatory mechanism” for receiving refugees in the EU.
“The president and the chancellor have today decided to forward joint proposals on the organisation of the reception of refugees and a fair sharing in Europe,” said the Élysée Palace.
Germany, along with the European commission, has been pushing hard for a new mandatory system since May when Juncker tabled much more modest proposals for the compulsory sharing of 40,000 bona fide asylum-seekers over two years. A summit of EU leaders in June rejected the quotas, saying they could only be voluntary and eventually agreeing to share only 32,000.
The east European countries and Spain were the main opponents. Four east European prime ministers are to meet on Friday to consider their positions. Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, reiterated his opposition to quotas in Berlin this week.
But the speed of developments on the ground is dictating political responses. Donald Tusk, who chairs EU summits as president of the European council, said the EU should agree to share at least 100,000 refugees. In June, he opposed the quotas system. The proposed figures - 100,000 to 160,000 - refer merely to a mandatory quotas system, beyond the much higher numbers of asylum claims that the countries will have to process in any case. Germany alone expects 800,000 this year.
There is certain to be a fight over the new policy when EU interior ministers hold an extraordinary session on the migration crisis on 14 September.
In Brussels on Thursday, Hungary’s hardline anti-immigrant prime minister, Viktor Orban, said quotas would only encourage more people to head for Europe from the Middle East and Africa. “Quotas is an invitation for those who want to come,” he said. “The moral human thing is to make clear, please don’t come.”
But the east Europeans are under intense pressure to fall in with the German line and already Poland and Lithuania are making concessions.
There were pitiful scenes in Hungary where migrants thronged Budapest’s main railway station and packed into a train they believed was going to Austria en route to Germany, which has opened its doors unconditionally to refugees from Syria.
The train was halted 30km out of Budapest and met by a phalanx of riot police who sought to empty the carriages and march the people to a camp.
The Hungarian leader, widely criticised for his anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, went on the offensive in Brussels. He said Europe was in the grip of madness over immigration and refugees and argued that he was defending European Christianity against a Muslim influx.
“Everything which is now taking place before our eyes threatens to have explosive consequences for the whole of Europe,” Orban wrote in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. “Europe’s response is madness. We must acknowledge that the European Union’s misguided immigration policy is responsible for this situation. Irresponsibility is the mark of every European politician who holds out the promise of a better life to immigrants and encourages them to leave everything behind and risk their lives in setting out for Europe.”
He painted the refugee emergency as a crisis between Christianity and Islam, with Hungary on the frontline, erecting razor wire fences to keep people out and defend European civilisation against incomers.
“Those arriving have been raised in another religion and represent a radically different culture. Most of them are not Christians, but Muslims,” he said. “This is an important question, because Europe and European identity is rooted in Christianity. Is it not worrying in itself that European Christianity is now barely able to keep Europe Christian? There is no alternative and we have no option but to defend our borders ... If Europe does not return to the path of common sense, it will find itself laid low in a battle for its fate.”
In Brussels, he invoked Hungary’s partial subjugation by the Ottoman empire in the 17th century as the reason why Hungarians did not want to live alongside Muslims.
In Washington, White House press secretary, Josh Earnest said that the European Union “certainly has the capacity” to deal with the refugee crisis and indicated that the US would support its allies with technical expertise – such as from the nation’s Coast Guard – and continue to offer financial assistance to meet humanitarian needs.
