Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido (center) and EU Commissioner for Migration and Home Affairs Dimitris Avramopoulos (left) talk ahead of a Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting to discuss cooperation with Libya to stem the migrant crisis, on September 14, 2017 in Brussels | Aurore Belot/AFP via Getty Images Brussels to end mandatory refugee relocation (for now) Two-year scheme coming to an end and won’t be extended.

The EU's controversial refugee relocation scheme won't be renewed when it runs out at the end of this month — but Brussels will keep on helping member countries that take in refugees, according to senior diplomats.

On September 26, the scheme, which aimed to take 160,000 refugees who had arrived in Italy and Greece and move them across the bloc, will come to an end. However, the scheme fell well short of expectations. As of September 4, just 27,695 refugees had been relocated and some EU members, notably Hungary and Poland, refused to take part even though participation was supposed to be mandatory.

“Relocation doesn’t stop on September 26, we should keep working on the same path, it’s a continuous scheme,” said European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos.

The problem for the Commission is how to deal with the refugees who arrive after September 26. A new, permanent mechanism for relocating refugees is being discussed as part of an update to the Dublin rules — which state that the EU country in which asylum seekers first set foot must deal with their applications. But those talks are stalled and the Commission must figure out how to fill the gap.

The plan is to keep on supporting member countries that are willing to relocate but without launching a new relocation scheme.

“The Commission has announced the possibility to continue to provide financial support for relocation after September 26,” said a diplomat, who didn't want to be named.

Officials said the Commission informed EU ambassadors and interior ministers of its intentions ahead of the release of a package of measures on migration on September 27. None of the interior ministers challenged the Commission proposal, said another diplomat who was in the room.

Mandatory relocation inflamed an already tense relationship between the EU and some countries in Central and Eastern Europe. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker sought to ease those tensions in his State of the Union speech last Wednesday by saying “Europe must breathe with both lungs” — a reference to its East and West.

The scheme, designed to last for two years, was introduced as an emergency measure during the migration crisis of 2015. But the mandatory aspect of the program was contested in court by Hungary and Slovakia, which earlier this month lost their case. The Commission also started legal action against Hungary and Poland, neither of which has taken in a single refugee under the scheme, and against the Czech Republic, which has not pledged to take part in the scheme for over a year.

Warsaw is studying every move Brussels makes on migration and seems likely to challenge in court any measure that would extend relocation or make Poland take in refugees, said one of the diplomats.