The national leaders of Europe have engaged in one of their most bitter rows in years over how to respond to the influx of refugees from across the Mediterranean after they scrapped plans for a quota system to share out the resettlement.

The meeting descended into name-calling and recrimination as the leaders fought over a modest scheme to share the intake of 60,000 Syrian and Eritrean asylum seekers between their countries over two years.

A summit that also had to grapple with the Greek debt crisis and the British referendum on whether to stay in the EU was almost entirely consumed until 3am on Friday by the blazing row over a scheme criticised by humanitarian agencies as risibly inadequate for the scale of the problem.

Italy and Lithuania traded barbed insults, while two EU presidents – Donald Tusk, chairing the summit, and Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European commission – fought for hours over the wording of the summit statement, which could not be agreed.

The Lithuanian president, Dalia Grybauskaite, told Matteo Renzi, the prime minister of Italy, which is on the frontline of the refugee crisis, that she had no intention of contributing to any solution. Renzi accused government chiefs of wasting time and was said to reply: “If this is your idea of Europe, you can keep it”.

Friday morning’s Italian newspapers spoke of a “savage” battle between the two countries.

Juncker emerged bleary eyed shortly after 3am to attack Tusk, saying: “I protest against this working method. It’s a modest effort, let’s be honest.”

His proposal for a system of mandatory quotas for countries to take in migrants had come under sustained assault for hours. “I don’t give a damn,” he said.

“If there was a conflict between us, it would never be presented as a conflict,” he said of the row with Tusk.

Angela Merkel of Germany, which takes in far more asylum seekers than any other country, described the immigration crisis “as the biggest challenge I have seen in European affairs in my time as chancellor”.

During those 10 years, Merkel has been the key figure in five years of eurozone crisis and is the lead European trying to deal with Russia’s military partition of Ukraine.

Britain stayed on the sidelines of the dispute since it is not part of the EU’s passport-free Schengen zone, has opted out of EU asylum policy and has said it will not take part in the proposed refugee-sharing scheme.

The bad-tempered exchanges are certain to be repeated as EU interior ministers attempt over the next month to agree on how to share out the resettlement of the 60,000 asylum seekers.

Effectively telling Brussels to mind its own business on the politically toxic issue of immigration, the summit buried calls for a more equitable system across the 28 countries.

“We have no consensus among member states on mandatory quotas for migrants,” Tusk said. “It will take much time to build a new European consensus on migration.”

Instead of discussing measures for a more organised and equitable system of taking people in, the leaders focused on how to keep people out and deport those who get in.

“First and foremost, we need to contain illegal migration and this should be our priority. All those who are not legitimate asylum seekers will have no guarantee that they will stay in Europe,’’ Tusk said.

Faced with an influx of migrants through the Balkans, Hungary has started building a four-metre-high wire fence along its border with Serbia, while Italy is struggling to cope with the the tens of thousands reaching its southern shores after risking their lives in unseaworthy vessels to cross the Mediterranean from Libya.

Of the proposed quota system, a senior EU official said: “The idea that Brussels imposes quotas is not going to fly. It will never gather the support of the member states.”

But Juncker refused to accept the rejection and fought on for hours. The argument focused on the form of words used to describe the decisions taken by the summit, with Tusk adding the word “voluntary” to the text and seeking to change the decision-taking basis for the policy from one of majority voting to unanimity, meaning that any country would have a veto on the issue.

The decision to distribute 40,000 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece and to take in 20,000 Syrians and Eritreans who have fled their countries but not reached the EU was a token gesture to Italy.

The summit defined the 40,000 scheme as “temporary and exceptional”, to be spread over two years. It will have little impact on the overall numbers, given that more than 600,000 people sought asylum in the EU last year. The figures for new arrivals this year are much higher.

According to the latest figures from Frontex, the EU’s border agency, the number of migrants arriving at the EU’s external borders has risen by a factor of 2.5 this year compared with 2014, from 61,500 to 153,000. The numbers coming through the Balkans were nearly nine times higher than last year.

Mediterranean crossings last month were 29% up on April, and there has been a five-fold increase so far this year in those using the eastern Mediterranean route compared with the same period in 2014.

The number of first-time asylum seekers in the EU in the first quarter of 2015 almost doubled compared with the first three months of 2014, according to Eurostat, the EU statistics agency. About 40% of the claims were lodged in Germany compared with only 4% in Britain.

The summit decided on a number of measures aimed at speeding up asylum processing and expelling those whose claims are turned down.

EU development funds, trade agreements and diplomatic pressure would be deployed as leverage on the migrants’ countries of origin to encourage them to sign readmission agreements with the EU.

“All tools shall be mobilised to promote readmission,” the summit decided.

“Structured border zones” or “hotspots” would be established in southern Italy to quarantine those arriving, fingerprint and register them and expedite the deportation of those deemed to have entered illegally or to be economic migrants.

European police and border agencies would be granted new powers for implementing policies that until now have been the sole remit of national authorities.

Syrians and Eritreans arriving in the EU in high numbers can seldom be repatriated because of the risk to their lives at home. Their treatment in the asylum regime would remain unchanged and their cases would remain in the relevant national systems as before.

Britain’s refusal to take part has been widely criticised. Peter Sutherland, the UN secretary general’s special representative for international migration, told the Today programme on BBC Radio 4 that Britain’s decision had forced countries such as Greece and Italy to take on an “unfair burden of responsibility”.

“All member states, incidentally, should participate in the voluntary settlement, including Britain, Ireland and Denmark. There is absolutely no reason, if this is not compulsory, why they should feel they can opt out,” he said.

“This is a question, basically, of European solidarity. Why should Greece and Italy in particular take this unfair burden of responsibility for people who are refugees escaping from persecution?”

Sutherland acknowledged that Britain had been playing a role by rescuing some of the refugees in the Mediterranean. Asked if that was not enough, he said: “Absolutely not, sure. There is a massive degree of support from other countries in regard to helping people in the Mediterranean and saving lives. This is a separate issue. It is the issue of the fair distribution amongst the EU on the basis of solidarity of people who are refugees.”

He said EU leaders should have agreed a compulsory programme on the resettlement of migrants, and that the overnight deal was



a mistake.



“It could have been more ambitious. There is no doubt that it reflects limited progress nonetheless. We can only judge it when we see what countries come up with.”







