BRUSSELS
Germany and France have demanded changes to the European Commission’s plans to resettle migrants reaching European shores through Italy and Greece.
According to the European Commission’s plans, France and Germany would take in nearly 40 percent of the 40,000 Syrian and Eritrean migrants expected to arrive in Europe over the next two years.
"This temporary re-localization mechanism must be founded on two principles of equal importance: responsibility and solidarity," France and Germany said in a joint statement Monday.
"We believe that the balance between these two principles has not yet been reached in the proposal presented by the Commission," the statement said, adding that they were ready to study the commission’s proposal.
The two countries called for a formula to "take more properly into account the efforts already made by member states regarding international protection, and other forms of assistance".
The plan to resettle 40,000 Eritrean and Syrian migrants is an addition to the EU’s announcement on May 13 about its plans to accept 20,000 migrants over the course of two years and allocate to them places to stay across the 28-nation bloc in the wake of the Mediterranean migrant crisis.
According to the European Commission’s migration plan, presented on May 13, refugees would be spread across the EU under a quota scheme based on the member state’s population size, gross domestic product and unemployment rate.
This means Germany, as the EU’s largest economy, would take in the most migrants, followed by France and Italy.
Meanwhile, EU's Frontex border agency reported Sunday that its rescue missions saved more than 5,000 migrants in the Mediterranean Sea since Friday.
“This is the biggest wave of migrants we have seen in 2015,” Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri said in a statement.
The International Organization for Migration reports that around 1,820 migrants died or went missing in the Mediterranean in 2015.
