European Union interior ministers agreed on Monday to relocate more than 32,000 refugees in Greece and Italy to states across the 28-member bloc. But the fate of 8,000 migrants remained uncertain after Monday talks in Brussels.
“We have a solution for relocation this year. For next year we are not yet exactly there, we will talk about this in October or November,” said Emily Haber, secretary of state in Germany’s Interior Ministry, after the talks, DW reported.
In June, EU leaders struck a deal on distributing 40,000 migrants coming from Eritrea and Syria among member states.
At Monday’s meeting, Germany committed to taking in 10,500 refugees. Non-EU countries Switzerland and Norway agreed to take in 519 and 3,500 people, respectively. Another 22,504 migrants living in camps outside the EU were being relocated within the bloc.
However, there were still around 8,000 migrants who could not be settled.
“Figures are sometimes encouraging, sometimes disappointing, sometimes, even, perhaps, embarrassing,” Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who headed the meeting, told journalists.
France and Germany agreed to take in around 21,000 asylum seekers earlier this year, but Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, Slovakia, Spain and the Baltic states have been reluctant to house immigrants.
