Croatian Prime Minister Zoran Milanovic on Thursday said his country is willing to accept a share of the 40,000 refugees, mainly from Syria and Eritrea, who recently arrived in Greece and Italy, which Brussels wants distributed round the EU.

Milanovic made the offer ahead of an EU summit dominated by migration issues and the Greek crisis.

The European Commission wants the 40,000 shared around all member countries and recommends that another 20,000 people, who are currently outside the EU but are entitled to international protection, admitted.

Under the proposal, Croatia should receive 747 refugees now in Italy and Greece, and another 315 people who are currently outside the EU.

“Croatia is prepared, for humanitarian reasons to accept a smaller number of people, but we cannot go beyond that,” Milanovic said, not going into the numbers.

Less than 100 asylum seekers are currently in Croatia, according to the Ministry of Interior, and the authorities granted refugee status to just 25 people last year, the lowest number of any EU member state, aside from Estonia.

Last year, while the EU registered a 44-percent surge in asylum claims, Croatia saw a decrease of 58 per cent. The EU statistics bureau, Eurostat, said a total of 450 asylum applications were submitted in Croatia in 2014. Italy saw 64,625 and Hungary 42,775. Two thirds of all asylum requests last year were made in just four countries – Germany, Sweden, France and Italy.

Factors deterring refugees from claiming asylum in Croatia are the country’s homogeneity, a high unemployment rate of 17 rate and ignorance of the language.

A number of EU countries, including Britain, have said they will not accept allocated quotas of refugees as the principle violates their national sovereignty and control of their borders. Hungary, meanwhile, has said it plans to build a fence or wall with neighbouring Serbia to stop illegal migrants entering the country. A well-trodden refugee trail runs from Turkey to Western Europe via Macedonia, Serbia and Hungary.

The Hungarian government has set aside 20.9 million euros for the project. It says almost all illegal migrants into the country arrive via the southern border with Serbia.