France to take in 24,000 refugees over next 2 years

PARIS

France will accept 24,000 refugees over the next two years as requested by the European Commission.

French President Francois Hollande was taking part Monday in 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 added that France will take 1,000 migrants who traveled 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 will receive 60,000 asylum requests compared to Germany's 800,000 this year.

France and Germany have presented on Friday 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 centers initially in the two most affected countries, Italy and Greece, where asylum applications would be examined, before migrants resettled across EU member states.

Proposals also include opening centers 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 he "will propose to host an international conference on refugees in Paris".

Hollande slammed Hungary over its refusal to accept refugees.

"Has it forgotten how it was taken in by Europe at the end of the Cold War and welcomed into the EU?" Hollande said.

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

On June 17, 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 U.N. 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 trying to reach the continent this year alone.

The total number of Syrian refugees alone exceeds 4 million worldwide.