A far-right Dutch politician labelled the refugee crisis as an 'Islamic invasion' during a parliamentary debate today - exposing deep divisions over how the Netherlands should respond to the crisis.

Geert Wilders made the inflammatory comments following European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker's appeal to EU members to share out refugees.

Wilders is the founder and leader of the Party for Freedom, who are currently the most popular in opinion polls in the Netherlands.

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Inflammatory comments: Far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders labelled the refugee crisis as an 'Islamic invasion' during a parliamentary debate today

He said: 'Masses of young men in their twenties with beards [are] singing Allahu Akbar across Europe. It's an invasion that threatens our prosperity, our security, our culture and identity.'

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said the EU should house them in camps closer to their country of origin, rather than in Europe.

At those sites, which he called 'UNHCR plus' facilities in a reference to the U.N. refugee agency, people would have access to education and jobs.

'We want to help to relieve the problems in the region by making the existing facilities more manageable,' he said.

'It will take energy and money and manpower, but we can work toward a situation where there is more security in the region and we can avoid people boarding boats to Europe,' he said.

Angela Merkel, leader of Germany which is taking in far more refugees than any other EU country, wants the rest of the EU to accept quotas of asylum seekers.

Swamp: A Syrian refugee carries her baby as she traipses through the mud to cross the border from Greece into Macedonia during a rainstorm

Stand off: Macedonian soldiers try to keep migrants and refugees under control before they cross the border line from Greece into Macedonia

The conservative Dutch government says it is only willing to take in more if all EU states agree.

Meanwhile Finland's government has proposed raising taxes on high earners to help pay for a 10-fold increase in refugees expected to arrive this year.

The EU migrant crisis proposes a political as well as a financial challenge for the country's coalition, whose foreign minister, Timo Soini, heads the Eurosceptic party, The Finns, which campaigned for tighter controls on immigration.

Finance Minister Alexander Stubb said the highest bracket of capital gains tax would be raised by one per cent while people earning more than 72,300 euros (£53,000) would be required to pay a so-called solidarity tax for two years, lowering the threshold from 90,000 euros.

'These will help to cover higher immigration costs which we estimate to be about 114 million euros this year,' Stubb told a news conference.

Forcing them back: Macedonian soldiers try to keep migrants under control before they cross the border line from Greece into Macedonia

A migrant falls down as he tries to pass a police cordon at the border between the northern Greek village of Idomeni and southern Macedonia

The centre-right coalition, which took office in May, is struggling to cut government spending quickly in a shrinking economy where unemployment is on the rise.

Finland last week doubled its estimate for the number of asylum seekers expected this year to up to 30,000, compared with just 3,600 last year.

The government agreed before the summer that any EU plan to apportion asylum seekers among EU states should be voluntary.

Nevertheless, its interior minister, from the pro-EU National Coalition party, agreed in July to take about 800 refugees from among those who had arrived in Greece and Italy.

The government is due to decide on Friday on how to respond to a new EU quota proposal.

Meanwhile today, thousands of migrants battled with riot police in a Macedonian quagmire after storms battered eastern Europe.

Greek border police said it as the largest single wave of refugees they had seen so far.

The migrants told police that they wanted to continue through Denmark to claim asylum in Sweden

The migrants forced the closure of the main E45 motorway near Kliplev having arrived from Germany

Despite wrapping themselves up in garbage bags of every kind, the migrants were soaked to the skin, their trainers caked with mud and hats dripping with rain.

Yesterday, Denmark was forced to make a U-turn on closing its borders to migrants and says it will no longer stop migrants travelling freely through the country if they didn't want to seek asylum there.

The decision appeared to contradict the Danish political line, although there was no immediate reaction from the government.

Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen insisted on Monday that refugees arriving in Denmark ought to be registered and have their asylum requests processed there.

Under European Union rules, people seeking asylum should do so in the first EU country they enter and not travel from one country to another.

In one incident yesterday, around 300 refugees, including large numbers of women and children, set off on foot for Sweden, forcing police to shut the motorway near Padborg for a several hours.

The migrants had been housed in an old school building after arriving in the town but took to the road, saying they wanted to travel north to Sweden.

Some elderly migrants called off their 180-mile trek to Copenhagen, the jumping-off point for crossings by bus, train or car to Sweden.