EU Relocates Only About 500 Refugees - European Commissioner

European commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship said that only about 500 refugees who were on the Greek and Italian territories have been sent to other EU countries in accordance with the bloc members' pledge to relocate up to 40,000 asylum seekers from both countries within two years.

BRUSSELS (Sputnik) – So far only about 500 refugees who were on the Greek and Italian territories have been sent to other EU countries in accordance with the bloc members' pledge to relocate up to 40,000 asylum seekers from both countries within two years, the European commissioner for migration, home affairs and citizenship said Wednesday.

"We need to urgently switch gears on #relocation. So far, only 497 migrants were relocated. MS have to show #solidarity & #responsibility," Dimitris Avramopoulos wrote on Twitter.

On September 14, 2015, European interior ministers adopted the mechanism to relocate some 40,000 refugees residing in Italy and Greece throughout the bloc’s 28 members on an equitable basis at an extraordinary meeting.

About a week later, the bloc's interior ministers agreed to relocate some 120,000 asylum seekers, currently in Greece, Italy and Hungary, to other EU member countries under a mandatory quota system in an attempt to ease the burden on the union’s frontier states.

The plan was strongly opposed by several EU states, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and Hungary.