EU plans to accept 50,000 refugees from Africa, Mideast

The EU unveiled plans Wednesday to take at least 50,000 refugees directly from Africa, the Middle East and Turkey to discourage refugee boats from making the risky Mediterranean crossing.

The proposal involves admitting refugees to European Union countries over the next two years under the bloc's resettlement program, which was introduced during the refugee crisis that hit the continent in 2015.

"We need to open real alternatives to taking perilous irregular journeys," European Union Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told a news conference in Brussels.

The European Commission said in a statement that it was "recommending a new EU resettlement scheme to bring at least 50,000 of the most vulnerable persons in need of international protection to Europe over the next two years".

The EU has already resettled 23,000 people from refugee camps in countries outside the EU under the scheme, particularly Turkey and Jordan, which were overwhelmed with people fleeing the war in Syria.

Resettlement would continue from those areas but there would be "increased focus" on North Africa and the Horn of Africa -- particularly Libya, Egypt, Niger, Sudan, Chad and Ethiopia, the commission said.

"This will contribute to further stabilizing migration flows along the Central Mediterranean route," which mainly involves people making the dangerous crossing from Libya to Italy, it said.

The resettlement program is different from the EU's controversial refugee quotas, which involved moving asylum-seekers who had already reached Italy and Greece to other EU countries, under compulsory quotas.

The latter scheme, which ended on Wednesday, saw just 29,000 people out of a planned 160,000 shared out around EU states to ease the pressure on the overstretched Greek and Italian authorities.

Brussels separately released plans Wednesday to allow countries in the passport-free Schengen area to reintroduce border controls for security reasons for up to three years.

SS