EU refugee meeting amid deep rifts

European Union interior and justice ministers will meet in Brussels on Monday in a bid to hammer out a united policy on handling the huge number of people currently arriving in Europe in the hope of finding refuge from conflict and poverty in their home countries.

The ministers will face a huge challenge working out a common approach to coping with the situation, with a number of the bloc's 28 member states opposing European Commission plans for distributing 120,000 new arrivals in a quota scheme.

Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania are all resisting the implementation of the relocation program.

Hungary, which reported a new record of 4,330 refugee arrivals on Saturday, is planning to finish an anti-migrant fence on its border with Serbia by Tuesday, when tough new laws criminalizing anyone crossing the border will take effect. People contravening the laws could face up to three years in jail.

The Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka has said his country will never accept compulsory quotas, while Slovakia has announced it will try to block any quota scheme at Monday's meeting.

Romania, in its turn, is refusing to receive any more than 1,785 refugees, in the face of EU requests to take in 4,650 under the quota system.

Germany and France united

Ahead of Monday's talks, German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with French President Francois Hollande to discuss what to do next to manage the huge refugee influx.

A spokeswoman said the two leaders were agreed in their assessment of the current situation, and would prepare the meeting on Monday together.

Germany, which has taken in by far the most asylum seekers of any EU nation, has appealed to other member states to participate in the quota system.

Last week, both Germany and Austria opened their borders to take pressure off Hungary in what they said was a one-off emergency measure. But the huge numbers of migrants coming into Germany prompted the government on Sunday to temporarily introduce border controls on the frontier to Austria and suspend train services from the neighboring country.

Authorities in the southern German state of Bavaria said a total of 12,200 refugees had arrived by rail in the regional capital Munich on Saturday and 4,500 by Sunday evening.

The Czech Republic said it would follow Germany's example by stepping up security measures on its border to Austria.

'Critical meeting'

The UN's refugee agency UNHCR said on Sunday that the decision to reintroduce border control measures underlined how urgent it was to find "a comprehensive European response" to the migrant crisis.

Calling Monday's meeting "critical," the UNHCR said such a response should include a program to fairly distribute refugees among all EU countries.

It also warned against a "fragmentation" of EU border rules.

tj/bw (AFP, AP, dpa)