EU votes to resettle 120,000 refugees

LONDON – Over the strong objections of some, government ministers from the European Union voted Tuesday to resettle 120,000 refugees, distributing them across the continent but making only a small dent in Europe’s huge migrant crisis.

The decision came through an extremely rare majority vote, rather than a full consensus, of the interior ministers from the EU’s 28 member states, attesting to the deep division over the issue.

Dissenting were several former Soviet bloc countries: Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia. Finland abstained. But under EU rules, the objecting nations must comply with the plan to accept refugees, who will be distributed according to each country’s population and wealth. The bulk will be taken in by Germany, France and Spain.

The overall number represents only a small portion of the nearly half a million migrants who have poured into Europe this year from war-torn and poverty-stricken countries in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. Germany has already pledged to accept up to 800,000 asylum seekers.

Yet even the relatively low EU commitment met with fierce resistance from the countries that voted against the plan. That forced the ministers gathered in Brussels to resort to a vote, a departure from the usual practice of decisions by consensus that analysts say raises serious questions about the future of the European Union and its goal of greater integration.

“We would’ve preferred to have adoption by consensus, but we did not manage to achieve that. But it was not for want of trying,” said Jean Asselborn, the foreign and European affairs minister from Luxembourg, which holds the rotating EU presidency.

Asselborn said pointedly that he expected all countries, including the objectors, to abide by the decision, as expected under the rules of EU membership. The Slovakian prime minister was reported to have declared after the meeting that his country would refuse to participate in the resettlement plan.

Hungary, which has sealed some of its borders with razor wire to keep asylum seekers out, said it would comply.

“This is a decision we are going to respect and we are going to fulfill,” Zoltan Kovacs, a government spokesman, told the BBC.