E.U. summit boosts aid for refugees

  25 September 2015    Read: 693
E.U. summit boosts aid for refugees
European Union leaders vowed to boost humanitarian aid in response to the escalating refugee crisis after a summit that left them divided over how to police the bloc
After weeks of what E.U. Council President Donald Tusk described as “recriminations” and “chaos” over migrant quotas, internal passport checks and external border fences, the leaders of the 28-nation bloc continued to struggle toward a joint response.

Common border defenses are “new and controversial, it’s also about sovereignty,” Tusk told reporters early Thursday after the meeting in Brussels. “The greatest tide of refugees and migrants is yet to come. Therefore we need to correct the policy of open doors and windows.”

Some summit pledges will kick in immediately, such as an increase in financial and food aid for Middle Eastern refugee camps; others were recycled, such as a promise to set up registration centers on European soil, now due by late November.

The summit was the E.U.’s third top-level migration strategy session this year, each time with the scale of the problem increasing. Refugees pose a global challenge requiring international efforts, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told lawmakers Thursday in the Bundestag in a speech outlining the results of the summit.

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