BRUSSELS – European Union leaders opened a second day of migration talks Friday as Poland and Hungary continued to block progress after they were outvoted earlier this month on a plan to share refugees arriving in Europe among the 27 member countries.
Some leaders said that Poland and Hungary seemed to be fighting a battle started years ago, when well over 1 million migrants entered Europe, most of them refugees fleeing Syria, in 2015 and sparked one of the bloc’s biggest crises. Others said the two simply must not be permitted to break EU rules.
“My feeling was there´s a lot of bitterness about the debates on migration from 2015,” Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas told reporters at EU headquarters in Brussels according to AP. “If you just say no to everything and everybody else tries to compromise that doesn´t really work out.”
Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob said that “Hungary was totally adamant” about having the issue removed altogether from the leader’s final summit communique. “It was not about let´s do it this way or the other way. It was like, `we don´t want to see migration being mentioned at all.´”
Golob confirmed that European Council President Charles Michel, who is chairing the summit, is likely to issue a separate chairman’s statement that does not require the endorsement of member countries.
Earlier this month, EU countries made a breakthrough on asylum law reform, sealing an agreement on a plan to share responsibility for migrants entering Europe without authorization.
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