Mediterranean migrants: EU leaders agree voluntary intake after heated talks

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jun/26/eu-leaders-hash-out-voluntary-system-to-address-mediterranean-migrant-crisis

Long, fractious meeting finally reaches deal on resettling 60,000 asylum seekers, but exempts Hungary and Bulgaria, while UK opts out

Mediterranean migrants: EU leaders agree voluntary intake after heated talks
Ian Traynor and Nicholas Watt in Brussels
Friday 26 June 2015 01.26 EDT

The national leaders of Europe have engaged in one of their most bitter rows in years over how to respond to the influx of refugees from across the Mediterranean after they scrapped plans for a quota system to share out the resettlement.

The meeting descended into name-calling and recrimination as the leaders fought over a modest scheme to share the intake of 60,000 Syrian and Eritrean asylum seekers between their countries over two years.

A summit that also had to grapple with the Greek debt crisis and the British referendum on whether to stay in the EU was almost entirely consumed until 3am on Friday by the blazing row over a scheme criticised by humanitarian agencies as risibly inadequate for the scale of the problem.

Italy and Lithuania traded barbed insults, while two EU presidents – Donald Tusk, chairing the summit, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European commission – fought for hours over the wording of the summit statement, which could not be agreed.