EU unveils bold refugee plan

European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled major plans yesterday to force the bloc to share 160,000 refugees and ease the burden on border states from the worst migration crisis since World War II.

As pressure mounted for an emergency EU summit on the issue, German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the bloc to go even further, calling for a distribution of migrants with no limits on actual numbers.

Underscoring the difficulties transit countries such as Hungary face, at least 400 desperate migrants broke through police lines at the flashpoint town of Roszke on Hungary's southern border with Serbia, yelling "No camp!" as they scattered in all directions.

With Greece, Hungary and Italy struggling to cope, Juncker urged Europe to look to its history and not be afraid of his "bold" proposals for compulsory quotas for a surge in mainly Syrian refugees fleeing conflict.

"Now is not the time to take fright, it is time for bold, determined action for the European Union," Juncker said in his first EU State of the Union speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.

He also warned member states against making religious distinctions when deciding to admit refugees.

A Danish policeman plays with a migrant girl on the E45 freeway north of Padborg yesterday. Migrants, mainly from Syria and Iraq and hoping to get to Sweden by walking on the freeway, arrived yesterday morning in Padborg on a train from Germany and were placed at a school from where they had fled. Photo: Reuters

Merkel -- whose country expects 800,000 asylum claims this year and has said it could take half a million annually over several years -- said Europe needed a binding long-term deal for the "fair" sharing of the burden.

"We need a binding agreement on the binding distribution of refugees according to fair criteria between member states," Merkel told the Bundestag. "We cannot just fix a ceiling and say I don't care about anything above that."

Prime Minister David Cameron yesterday defended Britain's decision not to participate in the binding European system of quotas to resettle refugees.

"If all the focus is on redistributing quotas of refugees around Europe, that won't solve the problem and it actually sends a message to people that actually it's a good idea to get on a boat and make that perilous journey," Cameron told MPs in parliament.

"Europe has to reach its own answers, for those countries that are part of Schengen. Britain, which has its own borders, has the ability to make sovereign decisions."

Britain is exempt from EU asylum and migration policy and Cameron had already made it clear that the country will not be involved in any quota system.

The migrants' plight has touched hearts around the world, spurred especially by pictures last week of three-year-old Syrian Aylan Kurdi, whose lifeless body washed up on a Turkish beach.

In response to appeals for help from an increasingly-strained Europe, Australia said it would take an additional 12,000 refugees from the Syria and Iraq conflicts and several South American countries also agreed to help.

But in Europe, mandatory quotas have faced stiff opposition, especially from eastern EU states such as Hungary, which have seen a huge surge in migrants travelling via the Western Balkans to get to Germany.

As Merkel and Juncker were speaking, hundreds of migrants broke through police lines on the Hungary-Serbia border.

Some ran towards a nearby motorway heading to Budapest which police then closed in the latest confrontation with thousands of migrants pouring across the frontier.

"We don't want to live any longer in the camps in Hungary or elsewhere, the conditions are horrible. It's too cold and everything is dirty, and it smells bad," said a young man from Damascus.

A Hungarian TV camerawoman was fired Tuesday after footage appeared to show her kicking and tripping up migrants, including children, as they ran away from a police line during disturbances at Roszke.

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said the country does not want more Muslim migrants.

Austrian officials said 6,000 migrants coming from Hungary passed through Vienna's Westbahnhof train station in the 24 hours, with almost all travelling on to Germany.

Juncker urged EU interior ministers -- who are meeting next Monday -- to back his new plan for the relocation of 120,000 refugees from Hungary, Greece, and Italy, and a plan first floated in May to relocate 40,000 others in Italy and Greece.

"It is 160,000 that Europe has to take into their arms, this has to be done in a compulsory way," said Juncker.

He also announced the setting up of a 1.8 billion-euro ($2.0 billion) fund to help desperately poor sub-Saharan countries, the source of many migrants.

Berlin said meanwhile it was open to a special EU refugee summit after the ministers' meeting and ahead of the next scheduled EU summit on October 14.

Under the Commission plan, Germany would take more than 31,000 migrants, France 24,000 and Spain almost 15,000.