EU’s Tusk says refugee quota ‘ineffective’

European Council President Donald Tusk said Tuesday the bloc’s compulsory refugee quota was “ineffective”. 

“The issue of mandatory quotas has proven to be highly divisive and the approach has received disproportionate attention in light of its impact on the ground. In this sense, it has turned out to be ineffective,” Tusk said in a letter to council members ahead of their meeting Dec 14-15. 

European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos slammed Tusk’s comments, describing them as “unacceptable” and “anti-European”. 

Avramopoulos said at a press meeting in Strasbourg, France that Tusk’s letter “ignores all the work we have done during the past years”.

“This letter is undermining one of the main pillars of the European project, the principle of solidarity,” he added.

The European Commission approved a plan two years ago to relocate 160,000 refugees in Italy and Greece to other countries, but only 30,000 people have been accepted by other countries so far.

Apart from Finland, Ireland, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta and Sweden, all countries’ quotas were below 50 percent. Poland, Hungary and Czechia, formerly known as the Czech Republic, refused to accept any refugees.