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Juncker Proposes Migrant Quota

Jean-Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, said European nations needed to take in 160,000 migrants and announced a package for legal migration, expected in early 2016.

By REUTERS on Publish Date September 9, 2015. Photo by Frederick Florin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Watch in Times Video »

BRUSSELS — The European Union’s top executive proposed a plan on Wednesday to distribute 160,000 people throughout the member nations, even while acknowledging that the plan was inadequate to the depth of the crisis.

Citing history, morality and economics, the official, Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, urged the bloc to put aside deep divisions over welcoming refugees from war-torn and poverty-stricken nations in the Middle East and Africa and forge a stronger and more unified response.

Facing strong resistance by some members to a quota system to that would compel them to take in a specified number of the new arrivals, Mr. Juncker cast the crisis as the most compelling one facing the bloc since World War II. It was not only a humanitarian issue but also a test of the European Union’s fundamental ability to act in a unified manner and in accordance with its values, rather than following some musty bureaucratic language or practices.

“There is not enough Europe in this union,” he said, referring to how the bloc has reacted so far. “And there is not enough union in this union. We have to change this. And we have to change this now.”

Continue reading the main story Graphic Seeking a Fair Distribution of Migrants in Europe German and European Union leaders have called for European countries to share the burden of absorbing the hundreds of thousands of migrants who have poured into the continent this summer.

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His tone mirrored in many ways that taken in recent days by Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, who also urged other European nations on Wednesday to agree on plans for dealing with the influx of people and has said her country expects to absorb 800,000 refugees this year alone.

He also proposed unity on such matters as identifying those who are more likely to be granted asylum, and establishing common standards for how they are treated, rather than a patchwork of national policies.

It is by no means certain that the plan he is advocating will be agreed to when officials meet on Monday to consider it. In any case, the program being pushed by Mr. Juncker is small relative to the scale of the challenge, with an estimated half-million people having endured hardship and risk to reach Europe this year alone.

“Do not underestimate the urgency,” Mr. Juncker said. “Do not underestimate our imperative to act. Winter is approaching — think of the families sleeping in parks and railway stations in Budapest, in tents in Traiskirchen, or on shores in Kos. What will become of them on cold, winter nights?”

The speech was delivered as thousands continued a land trek through an overburdened Greece, across the Balkans, and into Hungary, which is building a 110-mile fence on its border with Serbia to try to keep migrants out. From there, the migrants are moving toward Austria, Germany, Sweden and a handful of other prospering European nations in the north.

The migrants coming through the Balkans, many fleeing the chaos in Syria, have created a public and political response that previous waves, mostly Africans coming across the Mediterranean from Libya into Italy, have not.

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There were further protests, escapes and acts of violence on Wednesday across the Continent as the authorities struggled to impose order and follow the law, and migrants sought to reach their preferred destinations.

Mr. Juncker said a response that respects humanity and human dignity was a matter of “historical fairness,” and pointed out that Europeans are all too familiar with being refugees themselves.

“Let us be clear and honest with our often-worried citizens,” Mr. Juncker said, pointing to the root causes of the crisis. “As long as there is war in Syria and terror in Libya, the refugee crisis will not simply go away.”

Mr. Juncker, a former prime minister of Luxembourg, used his State of the Union address to the European Parliament to make a case that history and self-interest compel the bloc’s members to come together to address the issue, not just by helping the migrants but by more forcefully addressing the root causes of conflict and poverty in the Middle East and Africa.

“Europe has made the mistake in the past of distinguishing between Jews, Christians, Muslims,” he said.

Alluding to the barrier being built by Hungary to stem the flow of migrants, he said: “We can build walls, we can build fences. But imagine for a second it were you, your child in your arms, the world you knew torn apart around you. There is no price you would not pay, there is no wall you would not climb, no sea you would not sail, no border you would not cross if it is war or the barbarism of the Islamic State you are fleeing.”

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He also cast the plan as an antidote to the Continent’s looming labor woes, where an aging demographic threatens economic growth.

“We will be needing talent,” he said, and called for immigration to be treated as a “well-managed resource” rather than a problem.

But a version of the quota plan has been discussed for months, and European Union leaders failed to agree on far more modest quotas at a summit meeting in June. Many governments, like Britain, are contending with support for populist or anti-immigrant groups.

Indeed, the modesty of the plan — 160,000 people, in the face of hundreds of thousands seeking refuge — is a tacit acknowledgment of the hurdles it faces.

Countries like the Czech Republic and Hungary are likely to continue resisting any binding or permanent quotas.

Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, who on Monday said his government would accept 20,000 more from Syria, though only those who remain in that region, has balked at surrendering national autonomy on such matters, and has called for a national vote on whether Britain should remain in the European Union at all.

Others have argued that guaranteeing spots for migrants will only encourage more to make the journey.

Mr. Juncker is hardly the first to deliver such an appeal to European leaders. Last November, Pope Francis addressed the European Parliament in Strasbourg and challenged its malaise in addressing its problems. “The time has come for us to abandon the idea of a Europe which is fearful and self-absorbed,” the pope said.

Underscoring Mr. Juncker’s message was Ms. Merkel of Germany, who on Wednesday repeated her call for European leaders to reach a binding agreement on the distribution of the migrants throughout the bloc.

“We need to change,” she said, “and it won’t help anyone to point fingers and exchange blame over who didn’t do what, but we all need to go at this so that we can help the people arriving in our country.”

France, which had been skeptical about quotas, now supports Germany on the need to share the burden of taking in asylum seekers among all European countries.

Other nations outside the European Union, including Australia, have offered to take more of the Syrian refugees, and on Wednesday, Secretary of State John Kerry said that the United States was also open to admitting more than the 1,800 it has taken in since the Syrian war began five years ago.

Opposition to the emergency plan arose almost immediately after Mr. Juncker ended his address. “Let’s work out what each country can do to help those fleeing for their lives,” Syed Kamall, the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party in the European Parliament, told other lawmakers. “But let’s be clear: Telling countries what to do, forcing a plan on them, only risks more finger-pointing.”

The plans drew praise, as well, including from a number of his political opponents, like Ulrike Lunacek, a lawmaker in the Greens bloc of the European Parliament from Austria. Mr. Juncker’s calls for “solidarity with refugees” and for European countries “to finally step up to the plate” were “worthy of respect,” Ms. Lunacek said.

She also praised Mr. Juncker for having recommended that people who have applied for asylum be allowed to work and earn money while their applications were being processed.

The plan for relocating 160,000 people in Europe comes in addition to earlier plans to relocate 40,000 people who have reached Italy and Greece.

The European Union countries obliged to take people would receive them based on the size of their populations, their wealth, their unemployment rates and the numbers of asylum seekers who have already applied.

In practice, Germany, France and Spain would take the most people.Germany has said it is prepared this year to handle five times as many asylum seekers as the European total, independent of the quota system.

Italy, Greece and Hungary would receive 500 euros, about $560, for each person relocated to cover transport costs, while states receiving the relocated migrants would get €6,000 for each person.

The plan would require states to pay a small percentage of their gross domestic product, amounting to 0.002 percent of it, to help finance the efforts of neighboring countries if they cannot participate.

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