EU states face $290,000-a-head fine for rejecting refugees

EU states refusing to take refugees under an agreed resettlement deal will be ordered pay €250,000 ($290,000) per head, the European Commission said on Wednesday. 

The announcement comes a day after the Financial Times revealed the highly controversial part of Brussels' plans to overhaul EU’s asylum rules. 

Last September, the bloc agreed a deal to relocate 120,000 refugees in addition to 40,000 already set for relocation under a previous deal agreed earlier in the year.

Hungary, which opposes resettlement quotas, said the fines were "blackmail".

While the plan was pushed through thanks to pressure from Germany, the scheme has floundered with eastern European states in particular balking at resettling any refugees. 

The scheme was designed to ease the burden on front-line states such as Greece and Italy, from which more than one million illegal migrants tried to cross into northern Europe last year.

But by the start of the year, only 272 refugees had been relocated according to the EU Commission.

Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal and Finland take the bulk of refugees. 

Under the plan, Poland which is slated to take in 6,200 refugees would be left paying a €1.5bn ($1.75bn) fine. 

Hungary and Poland have both slammed the plan with Budapest calling it "blackmail" and Warsaw saying it sounded like an April Fool's joke.

"It's blackmail, it's unacceptable and a non-European type of proposal from the (European) Commission," Hungary's Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said after a meeting of top diplomats from four central European EU members and five post-Soviet countries in Prague.

"The quota concept is a dead-end street and I would like to ask the Commission not to run into this dead-end street," Szijjarto added.

Poland's Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski echoed Szijjarto, saying: "I'm still wondering if it's a serious proposal, because it sounds like an idea announced on April Fool's Day."

The Commission's move is part of a wider migration and visa overhaul which also saw the EU on Wednesday give conditional backing to visa-free travel for Turks and announce an extension of border controls in the passport-free Schengen zone. 

Turkey has threatened to tear up the March agreement to take back migrants who cross the Aegean Sea to Greece if the EU fails to keep its promise to allow Turkish citizens to travel without visas to the Schengen area by the end of June.

"The European Commission is today proposing... to lift the visa requirements for the citizens of Turkey" on condition that Ankara fulfils "as a matter of urgency" criteria set by the EU, according to a document tweeted by Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager.

The step must now be approved by all 28 EU member states and the European Parliament.

"The EU must stick to its promise," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said in televised comments on Wednesday.

"Our citizens deserve visa-free travel. We are about to complete the technical work including passport, we would like to see this in the EU Commission's report. If there is any shortcoming, it can be overcome with Turkey's determination," he said.