Police stand guard in front of Hauptbahnhof main railway station | Sascha Schuermann/Getty Cologne attacks ‘nail in the coffin’ of EU refugee policy Migration commissioner says EU policies have failed.

The EU's refugee policy is a failure and the mass sexual assaults in Cologne were a "nail in the coffin," senior officials said Thursday.

In a bleak meeting with MEPs, Dimitris Avramopoulos, the top EU official in charge of migration, said a plan to relocate 160,000 refugees across Europe "does not work.” He added that if member countries “act on the pressure of the domestic agenda, it will fail.”

“I agree that it [the relocation program] has not delivered the expected results," the migration commissioner said, adding that the scheme “can only give results when it will start working.”

The numbers show it isn't working. Only 272 people have been relocated so far, according to Commission figures.

Avramopoulos' remarks are a change of tone for the Commission. EU officials have so far responded to criticism by saying that the relocation scheme is new, and patience is required.

The change of rhetoric comes as diplomats become increasingly concerned at the lack of results from the agenda on migration presented by the Commission in May 2015.

“What happened in Cologne risks being the final nail in the coffin,” said one diplomat of the mass sexual attacks in the German city on New Year's Eve. Many of the attackers were identified as refugees.

“If some countries already ... were reluctant to take in single men, you can imagine what will happen now,” the diplomat said.

Avramopoulos said that if any of the Cologne attackers turn out to be refugees, they “must be put in prison if they cannot be sent back” to their home countries. The German government has threatened to deport any asylum-seekers found guilty. But legal experts claim that will not be easy if they come from war-torn countries such as Syria.

The future is no brighter for the coming year, the Greek commissioner told lawmakers on the Parliament's Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.

"The situation is getting worse,” Avramopoulos said, adding that “the goal is to see tangible results by the European Council in February” — a reference to a summit of EU leaders at which the issue will be revisited. But he acknowledged that the European asylum system “needs to be rethought.”

Avramopoulos told MEPs that the Commission hopes in March to present a revision of the Dublin system, which requires that the country through which a refugee enters the EU becomes responsible for processing paperwork. That puts a huge burden on Greece and Italy. He said the Commission is also working on a permanent resettlement scheme for refugees outside the bloc and new rules on legal migration.

One of the cornerstones of the EU's strategy has been to get help from Turkey in stemming the flow of refugees into Europe. But the commissioner acknowledged that this too has not been a success.

“We cannot be satisfied with the speed of implementation” of the EU-Turkey action plan approved in November, the commissioner said. “We need to see results.”

Europe pledged to give Turkey an initial €3 billion to tackle the refugee crisis in exchange for re-energized EU membership talks with Ankara.

Although Avramopoulos said he was “not very optimistic” about the future, he warned that the Schengen passport-free area must be protected. “If it collapses it will be the beginning of the end of the European project,” he said. "If borders are closed, the economy will be at stake.”

Towards the end of the debate, an MEP told Avramopoulos: “You have the most difficult job in the EU.”

No one disagreed.