European Union faces refugee quota proposal
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European Union faces refugee quota proposal
The president of the European Commission is calling for the relocation of thousands of refugees and migrants within the European Union in response to the surge in people seeking asylum within the 28 member states.
From our partners at the BBC, here’s a look at the numbers underpinning the crisis:
That’s how many migrants EC President Jean-Claude Juncker has proposed be relocated from Greece, Italy and Hungary to the rest of the EU’s member states — with the exception of the United Kingdom, Ireland and Denmark. The three quota-exempt countries are allowed to choose whether they want to participate in the system. Under the requirements, Germany would be set to take more than 40,000 refugees and migrants; France, more than 30,000; and Spain just under 20,000.
That’s the length in miles of a controversial fence Hungary has built to obstruct the passage of migrants and refugees into the country. On September 1, Hungarian authorities closed its main Budapest station after hundreds of migrants entered en route to Austria and Germany.
That’s the number of migrants detected at EU borders between January and August of this year, according to statistics from the Organization for Migration. Two hundred thirty-thousand of those migrants arrived in Greece and 115,000 in Italy. Those numbers are a surge from last year, when 280,000 were accounted for at EU borders.
That’s how many migrants and refugees Germany anticipates accepting by the end of the year. It’ll cost the European country $14,000 per refugee, which amounts to nearly $11 billion in spending. However, Germany stands to reap economic benefits by opening its borders a little wider. The refugees can help fill Germany’s aging and shrinking labor force.
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