by Our Foreign Desk

EUROPEAN Union leaders held an emergency summit yesterday to try to paper over the deep divisions that have emerged over the bloc’s refugee crisis.

On Tuesday, the 28-nation EU took a step toward dealing with the issue by agreeing to relocate 120,000 refugees, using a quota system to allocate numbers and eventual destination countries.

But the decision bared the wide divisions that the crisis has spawned, with four eastern European countries — the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary — voting against it.

Even after the plan was adopted, Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka denounced it as a “bad decision.”

And Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico warned that his country would try to block the deal in court.
“We won’t implement this decision,” he said.

And yesterday, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban appeared to say that military action could make the problem go away.

He repeated a suggestion that EU countries should help Greece protect its ­borders to prevent people flowing into the continent, saying that member states could volunteer troops for such a mission.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said that the relocation figures had been “accepted by the member states on a voluntary basis,” but the European Commission signalled that the dispute was far from over.

“A decision is a decision regardless of the way you voted,” said commission vice-president Frans Timmermans yesterday.

“The decision is legal, it’s valid and it binds all member states.”

And the commission appeared willing to back up its vice-president’s statement.

It announced before the meeting that it was opening 40 new infringement cases against 19 members for failing to implement EU asylum rules.

Infringement notices have been sent to Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Germany, Estonia, Greece, Spain, France, Hungary, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Latvia, Malta, Poland, Romania, Sweden and Slovenia.

But the crisis continued to grow unabated as over 2,500 refugees arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos as they were speaking.

About 40 rubber dinghies each carrying 60 to 70 people arrived on one beach in the space of three hours.