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EU agrees to resettle ‘very modest’ 60,000 refugees

EUROPEAN leaders have agreed to resettle 40,000 refugees currently in Italy and Greece to other EU countries over the next two years.

EU president Donald Tusk said yesterday the agreement was reached after an overnight summit to show “solidarity with front-line countries.”

The EU will also resettle 20,000 refugees, mostly from Syria and Iraq, currently in camps outside the EU.

But the agreements only cover a fraction of the total number of refugees arriving.

More than 114,000 have been rescued from overloaded boats operated by unscrupulous people-traffickers in the Mediterranean so far this year, and 2,600 have died or gone missing during the voyage.

“It is, to tell the disturbing truth, a very modest effort,” admitted European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker.

Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said: “There is a lack of ambition, a lack of will. It wasn’t a sense of solidarity that dominated around that table.”

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