EU launches bid to reform asylum rules to better share migrant burden
Refugees from Syria arrive at the Friedland shelter near Goettingen, central Germany, on April 4, 2016, after arriving from Turkey at the airport in Hanover. (AFP)
The European Union's executive launched a drive Wednesday to overhaul the EU's asylum rules to better share the burden of unprecedented migrant inflows.
"We need to reform our European asylum system," the European Commission's First Vice President Frans Timmermans told a press conference in Brussels.
"The present system is not working."
One million refugees and migrants arrived in Europe from the Middle East and North Africa in 2015, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) reports.
Approximately 850,000 of this one million sought passage via the Greek islands.
An estimated 49 percent were Syrian, 21 percent Afghan and eight percent Iraqi.
An additional 131,724 people have sought passage to Europe from Turkey this year, 122,637 of which entered the EU through Greece.
With AFP.
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