The first refugees left Greece on Wednesday under the second phase of a troubled European Union relocation plan as the number of people entering Europe illegally reached 800,000. And Sweden - a top destination for many asylum-seekers - asked for EU help to relocate some of the migrants it has taken in as it struggles with record numbers of new arrivals.
Thirty refugees were given a VIP send-off from Athens airport before flying to Luxembourg where they will begin a new life. They are the first to be relocated from Greece under plans, fiercely contested by some states, to share out nearly 160,000 migrants whose arrival has left frontline states swamped. At the airport, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said the six Syrian and Iraqi families were making "a trip to hope."
"Today they have the opportunity to make ... a better life," he said, flanked by Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and European Parliament chief Martin Schulz. "It's a drop in the ocean, but we hope the drop will become a stream and then a river of humanity." His remarks came after Fabrice Leggeri, head of the EU's Frontex border agency said 800,000 people had entered the EU illegally this year, telling Germany's Bild newspaper the influx had probably not "reached its peak".
The need for a solution to Europe's worst migration crisis since World War II is becoming increasingly urgent, with at least 80 people - many of them children - dying in the last week while trying to cross the sea from Turkey to Greece. "The human sacrifice that shames European civilisation must stop," said Tsipras, whose country saw more than 200,000 people reaching its shores last month alone, UN figures show.
The relocation scheme was got under way in Italy on October 9 after a bitter debate that split the 28-nation bloc along east-west lines, dividing older EU members from former Soviet bloc nations. In Stockholm, Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said he wanted EU help to relocate some of the refugees it had taken in. "Sweden has taken a disproportionately large responsibility in comparison with other countries in the EU, and now we are extremely strained," he said in a statement. "It is time that other countries take responsibility and that is why the government requires redistribution of refugees from Sweden."
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