EU to support member countries resettling refugees

By Fatih Hafiz Mehmet

ANKARA (AA) - The EU Commission announced on Wednesday that it will provide financial support to member states who made a collective pledge of more than 30,000 refugee resettlement places.

EU member countries made the pledge during the two-day Global Refugee Forum in Geneva, which was co‐hosted by the UN and Switzerland and co-convened by Turkey, Costa Rica, Ethiopia, Germany and Pakistan.

In a statement, the EU Commission said the bloc's resettlement program would prioritize resettlement sites from Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and countries along the Central Mediterranean refugee route.

The EU will allocate €10,000 ($11,100) from its budget for each refugee that member states resettle.

In 2015, the EU Commission announced it would settle 160,000 refugees in member states via a quota system in order to ease the burden on Italy and Greece.

However, Czechia, Hungary and Poland rejected the scheme, with the number of resettled refugees remaining at 65,000.

Also, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Tuesday that the EU disbursed only €2 billion ($2.2 billion) in aid to refugees in Turkey, despite its pledge of €6 billion ($6.6 billion).

Turkey stands as the world’s top refugee-hosting country as it provides shelter to over four million people, over 3.6 million of whom are Syrians displaced following the eruption of bloody civil war in 2011.