Invoking Europe’s centuries-long tradition of hosting people fleeing persecution and poverty, a top E.U. leader implored the continent Wednesday to reimagine its approach to immigration amid the worst refugee crisis in decades. The appeal came under immediate fire from anti-migrant leaders.
In a speech that reached back to the 17th-century Huguenots and stretched forward to the atrocities of the Islamic State, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker unveiled a proposal to spread 160,000 asylum seekers across Europe. But the sweeping plan went far beyond the immediate crisis, with a call to open the continent’s doors to other forms of migration, making aging E.U. nations more like the immigrant-rich United States.
The proposal aimed to provide a reception for the tens of thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans making their way toward Western Europe across the fields and forests of the Western Balkans, and Juncker said he wanted E.U. leaders to approve it as early as Monday. But several Central European leaders said they staunchly opposed any requirement for them to take in refugees. And with Germany alone expecting 800,000 asylum seekers this year, the plan also fell far short of addressing the actual numbers coming to Europe’s shores.
“Europe is a continent where nearly everyone has at one time been a refugee,” Juncker said. “Our common history is marked by millions of Europeans fleeing from religious or political persecution, from war, from dictatorship and from oppression.”
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