Two U.N. agencies on Tuesday appealed to the European Union to set aside years of divisive debate over the best way to manage migrants and refugees and make a “fresh start,” as Brussels prepares to unveil a major overhaul of Europe’s failed asylum system. The arrival in Europe of well over 1 million migrants, most of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria, in 2015 sparked one of the EU’s biggest political crises. The 27-nation bloc has been riven by disputes over who should take responsibility for those fleeing to Europe and whether other EU countries should be obliged to help the bloc’s hard-hit Mediterranean nations like Greece, Italy and Malta.
Two U.N. agencies on Tuesday appealed to the European Union to set aside years of divisive debate over the best way to manage migrants and refugees and make a “fresh start,” as Brussels prepares to unveil a major overhaul of Europe’s failed asylum system. The arrival in Europe of well over 1 million migrants, most of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria, in 2015 sparked one of the EU’s biggest political crises. The 27-nation bloc has been riven by disputes over who should take responsibility for those fleeing to Europe and whether other EU countries should be obliged to help the bloc’s hard-hit Mediterranean nations like Greece, Italy and Malta.