Germany Will Push for Compulsory EU Refugee Quotas

Chancellor Merkel's open-door policy faces a backlash as Germany braces for up to a million asylum requests this year.

One of Merkel's chief priorities is improving living conditions for the dislocated, most of whom are fleeing war-torn Syria, where an estimated 220,000 people have been killed since 2011 in the conflict that forced over half of the country's population into desperate, and risky exodus.

Leaders of nations along the Western Balkans migration route agreed Sunday night in general terms to cooperate more in dealing with the flow of refugees from the Middle East to Europe, but struggled to find a compromise on a key operational point: How many asylum-seekers should be sheltered in Greece, the country where majority first arrive.

The worrying new figures raised the pressure ahead of Sunday's meeting in Brussels grouping the leaders of Macedonia and Serbia along with the leaders of eight countries from the 28-nation European Union: Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Romania and Slovenia.

A stampede of refugees heading to Germany across his country prompted Orban to seal Hungary's borders with Serbia and Croatia, setting off a chain reaction of beggar-thy-neighbour actions by overstretched governments.

"All three countries... are ready if Germany and Austria and other countries close their borders... we will be ready to also close our borders at that very same moment", Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov said after talks between the three Balkan leaders in Sofia.

"If on Sunday we do not get sufficient (grounds for hope), if we see there is no will for collaboration, then all possibilities will are available, seeing as we will have been left alone", Cerar said.

These papers are issued by the country the unsuccessful asylum seekers are deported from, in this case Germany.

Juncker's worries follow a series of xenophobic attacks across Germany.

"That would be a good signal", he told ARD television.

Governments in central and eastern Europe are resisting demands from Berlin and Brussels to admit mandatory quotas of refugees.

The mini-summit, which EU diplomats said was sought by German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is the latest in a series of top-level EU meetings that have so far failed to settle on a common approach on how to deal with the thousands of migrants streaming into the EU every day.

Juncker praised Merkel for ignoring public opinion in her efforts to tackle the refugee crisis, which she describes as a bigger challenge for Europe than Greece's debt woes.

"This isn't about short-term popularity but about substance", Juncker told the Funke group.

By contrast, European Council President Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who chairs EU summits, calls the wave of migrants a "threat" to be "stemmed" or "contained", notably by paying Turkey to keep Syrian refugees on its soil.

People lit fires to warm themselves in the chilly morning fog, an AFP reporter said, while others looked for blankets, which appeared to be running short among voluntary aid workers.