EU Migrant Rift: Bloc faces largest migration crisis since WWII

World
Europe

01:40

The EU is facing its largest migrant crisis since the Second World War, with millions arriving from mainly the Middle East, and Africa. Wang Tongxuan gives us a breakdown of where they are in the bloc.

The refugee crisis peaked in 2015 in the EU with the arrival of one million migrants by sea, and almost 35-thousand by land. Over 800,000 arrived in Greece and 154,000 in Italy.

In 2016, the EU and Turkey reached a deal that stopped the flow of people, many of them Syrian refugees into Greece. The number fell by 97 percent, but it did not stop arrivals from Africa into Italy via the Mediterranean. Tensions in the EU have been rising due to the disproportionate burden faced by some countries where majority of migrants go: Greece, Italy and Hungary.

Germany has taken in hundreds of thousands of Syrians and others since 2014. In 2015, the country received the highest number of asylum applications at more than 476,000. However, German officials said the number of people who have arrived was much higher, reaching more than a million. And Merkel's "open door" migration policy is threatening her ruling coalition.

ANGELA MERKEL GERMAN CHANCELLOR "We think that there are good reasons to host refugees near their home, as the prime minister said. And we see our duty as being a reliable partner in financing projects."

A full EU summit is scheduled at the end of next week. If a "satisfactory" deal is not achieved at next week's summit German Interior Minister and CSU chief Horst Seehofer has threatened to defy Merkel and turn away at the German border people who have applied for asylum in other EU states.