Jean-Claude Juncker | EPA Juncker’s migration backfire EU diplomats say the Commission president’s hard line on quotas now puts the rest of his plan in jeopardy.

Jean-Claude Juncker has been pushing an ambitious agenda to deal with Europe’s migration crisis, insisting in the face of growing political resistance on a plan that would require all EU countries to share in the relocation of refugees.

Now even supporters of some form of refugee relocation say Juncker’s hard line is backfiring, threatening not just the mandatory quotas to accept asylum seekers but also the success of his entire migration plan.

The Commission proposal on the table would require that EU countries accept 40,000 asylum seekers from Italy and Greece. That part of the plan already faced strong opposition in the Council, especially from Eastern European and Baltic States, who now say they have a way to block it.

But now the second part of Juncker’s agenda — a resettlement over two years of 20,000 refugees, identified by the United Nations refugee organization UNHCR and then transferred to EU countries that accept them on a voluntary basis — appears also to be in jeopardy.

“When Juncker pressed ahead with this voluntary resettlement plan at the last European Council in April, it already cost some governments a lot of political capital to consent to this,” said a senior diplomat from an Eastern European member state. “Coming up with a mandatory relocation scheme so shortly afterwards overstepped the mark. Now they might withdraw their support completely.”

In several key countries, the far-reaching Juncker proposals have mobilized growing opposition to any resettlement of refugees, voluntary or not. Particularly in eastern European countries that aren’t used to accommodating large numbers of people from other places, the migration agenda is politically toxic.

The public backlash has also in part been fed by fears that the resettlement program, which brings most refugees from the Middle East, could be a conduit for Islamic terrorists to enter the EU.

Last week the newspaper Dagbladet reported that the Norwegian intelligence service stopped up to 10 suspected terrorists with links to the Islamic State and the Al-Nusra Front who were about to be resettled into the country after being selected by the UNHCR.

It’s not only the Eastern EU countries that believe Juncker’s proposal has tried to do too much. Germany and France are also balking.

In a joint statement, Berlin and Paris said last week that the distribution of asylum seekers within the EU must “first of all take the efforts already achieved by the member states better into account,” which is “not yet achieved by the proposition presented by the Commission.”

Madrid is also skittish. “The European Commission has put forward hasty proposals for relocation and resettlement,” said a Spanish diplomat.

At the core of the criticism is the so-called “redistribution key” that defines how many asylum seekers each country must accept under both the mandatory relocation and voluntary resettlement plans. The numbers are allotted based on a complex formula that takes into account each country’s population, economic growth, unemployment rate and previous involvement with the intake of asylum seekers.

“It’s more than unfortunate that the Commission included a redistribution key so badly elaborated.” – MEP Monika Hohlmeier.

The key has given critics of the plan a concrete target.

German MEP Monika Hohlmeier of the European People’s Party said the formula “is not fair and ignores many political realities.”

Germany and Sweden have to date taken in the most refugees coming to the EU.

“Germany has issued 34,000 humanitarian visas to Syrian refugees in the past three years,” said Tobias Plate, a spokesperson for German Interior Ministry. “That's more than one-third of all Syrian refugees worldwide that have been admitted in such programs.”

Germany complains that the new Commission redistribution key does not take these visas into account, and skews the calculation to its disadvantage.

“It’s more than unfortunate that the Commission came up with such an important proposal but included a redistribution key so badly elaborated,” said Hohlmeier, a member of the Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs. “It would be risky to accept it, even if Juncker’s migration agenda is temporary. Many countries fear that if this key is established once, it will be a door-opener for further migrant relocation.”

Some think the only hope for the plan is to adjust the numbers. “Current criteria could be different at the end of talks,” said Yves Pascouau, a migration expert at the European Policy Centre, said the details are still up for discussion.

But Juncker has remained resolute. “The Commission will not change its conception despite the resistance and opposition of some member states,” he said in a speech at the European Development Days conference last week.

Opponents see a way to stop Juncker’s plan

Germany and France, at least, still support the Commission’s basic idea for a mandatory relocation of asylum seekers; they just want some changes to the math. But Spain has moved from having initial doubts to an increasingly outright opposition to the Juncker plan.

“We are completely conscious of the emergency and we are supportive towards Italy and Greece, but we also would like to prevent the Commission from creating new problems by just relocating the problem,” the senior Spanish diplomatic source said.

“Alleviating this emergency requires a sound grounding” that can only be “established on a voluntary basis,” the source said. “We should aim at ensuring higher standards of protection for asylum seekers and not at enforcing transfers that could be both undesirable to the refugees and to [EU member states].”

“We’re confident that we can block the proposal in the Council” – Martin Povejšil, Czech ambassador to the EU.

Spain’s opposition to mandatory relocation now increases the leverage of opponents of Juncker’s migration agenda in the Council, where the proposal needs to pass with a qualified majority.

One of the fiercest adversaries is the Czech Republic. “We will not shy away from blocking this plan, which does not treat the problems where they arise,” said the Czech ambassador to the EU, Martin Povejšil.

Povejšil said that his country would be ready to enforce a special clause of the EU treaties, which gives each member state the right to demand a return to the old voting system. “This gives us more room to block the proposal in the Council. We’re confident that we can achieve that.”

Under the old voting system, the total number of votes of all EU countries is 352 — or, in the case of the migration agenda — 309, since the UK, Ireland and Denmark have the right not to participate in the Migration Agenda and therefore can’t vote on it.

To achieve the necessary qualified majority, Juncker’s agenda would need to receive at least 72 percent of these 309 votes, meaning 223.

But with Poland (27 votes), Hungary (12 votes), the Czech Republic (12 votes) and now Spain (27 votes) rejecting the proposal and Estonia (4 votes), Lithuania (7 votes) and Finland (7 votes) likely also opposing it, the Commission would fall short of a qualified majority with just 213 votes in favor.

Even in Italy, one of the main supporters of the Commission’s initiative on migration, the proposal is losing ground. While Rome is pushing its European partners to share the burden of migrants, some Italian regions in the rich North are refusing to take part in an internal relocation of migrants and refugees.

On Monday, during the G7, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi complained that “it is difficult to ask for an EU involvement when some regions in your country say that [migration] is not their problem.”

Meanwhile, another key item in the Migration Agenda, the proposed European naval mission to intercept smugglers, also remains stalled, with Libya and Russia raising objections as the UK pushes a resolution in the UN to approve the force. The Security Council is waiting to take the draft resolution further until the discussions in Brussels are more advanced, said a Security Council diplomat. There is therefore no date for circulation of a resolution or formal discussion at this stage, added the source.

With so many unresolved issues and just over two weeks before the next European Council, it seems more and more unlikely that a final decision will be taken this month.

“What matters is that the European Council sets the criteria and a mechanism for a fair burden sharing,” the Italian ambassador to the EU, Stefano Sannino, told POLITICO.

One scenario is that the Juncker plan will be watered down to achieve a compromise with majority appeal, another diplomatic source at the Council said, speaking under the condition of anonymity. “But even if they find a compromise to pass this agenda, don’t expect it to happen before July.”

By then, Juncker could have lost another supporter: Latvia. The country is already skeptical about the Migration Agenda like its Baltic neighbors Estonia and Lithuania, but for the moment it needs to support the proposal of the Commission at it holds the EU presidency.

On July 1, Latvia will hand that job over to Luxembourg.