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France to take in 24,000 refugees over next two years

September 7, 2015 at 2:35 pm

France is to accept 24,000 refugees over the next two years as requested by the European Commission, French President Francois Hollande has announced during his biannual press conference.

“The European Commission proposes a fair distribution of 120,000 refugees over the next two years. For France, this would make 24,000 refugees to take in and we will do it. We will do it because that is the principles that France is built on,” Hollande was quoted as saying.

The French premier added that France will take in at least 1,000 migrants who travelled from Hungary to Germany as a sign of solidarity with Berlin.

“We cannot leave Germany alone to take on this responsibility,” he said.

He also pointed out that France expects to receive 60,000 asylum requests compared to Germany’s 800,000 this year.

France and Germany on Friday presented a joint proposal to EU leaders for the resettlement of refugees across all EU member states.

One of the key elements of the proposals is opening migrant reception centres initially in the two most affected countries, Italy and Greece, where asylum applications will be examined before migrants are resettled across EU member states.

Proposals also include opening centres in African countries to inform asylum seekers about European asylum policy and conditions to apply for asylum, and stronger measures in fight against smuggling and human trafficking.

The French president said that he “will propose to host an international conference on refugees in Paris.”

Hollande also slammed Hungary over its refusal to accept refugees, asking if the country had “forgotten how it was taken in by Europe at the end of the Cold War and welcomed into the EU?”

On Friday, the Visegrad Group member states, the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia reaffirmed their opposition to quotas for refugee relocation between EU states.

On 17 June, Hungary began erecting a barbed wire fence to stop the flow of migrants into the country.

The French leader concluded that “without a united EU migrant policy, Schengen will collapse.”

Europe is facing its biggest refugee crisis in decades, with thousands of asylum seekers from Middle Eastern and African countries trying to reach Western Europe.

According to the UN Refugee Agency, more than 300,000 people have risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean Sea so far this year. Approximately 2,500 of them have died or gone missing in the first six months of this year.

The total number of Syrian refugees alone exceeds four million worldwide.