... I will call extra (summit) in September on refugee crisis."Brussels (ANTARA News) - EU president Donald Tusk said Friday he would call a summit of the 28 European Union leaders this month if their ministers fail next week to agree how to share refugees throughout the bloc.
Justice and home affairs ministers are to meet in Brussels on Monday to act on EU proposals to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers from overstretched Greece, Hungary and Italy and for a permanent mechanism of binding quotas to deal with future emergencies.
"Without concrete sign of solidarity and unity from JHA ministers Monday, I will call extra (summit) in September on refugee crisis," Tusk said in a tweet.
Tusk said he had detected some signs of change among member states who up to now have been very reluctant to admit asylum seekers in the face of growing anti-immigrant sentiment.
"After contacts with member states last days, (I am) more hopeful today that we are closer to solution based on consensus and genuine solidarity," Tusk said in another tweet.
France, which had been hostile to binding quotas, now supports Germany over the need for the permanent and mandatory reception of refugees to share the burden among all European countries.
There is new pressure for systematic and coordinated action to tackle the refugee crisis, particularly after the widely-distributed photograph of a Syrian toddler lying lifeless in the surf of a Turkish beach.
However, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier failed during a meeting in Prague to convince counterparts from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia to accept the EU plan.
European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the
Some 28-nation EUs executive branch, unveiled the plans in a speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday, in which he urged member states to back the proposals and said that "now is not the time to take fright."
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