The battle over migration reopened old political divisions and an agreement was reached just before dawn on Friday, after Rome and Paris conceded that new measures to share asylum seekers would be voluntary.
The EU summit in Brussels, which was billed as a make-or-break negotiation for Angela Merkel, German chancellor, saw showdowns between Italy and anti-immigration leaders in Hungary and the Czech Republic, who rejected automatic refugee quotas.
The euro rallied in early trading, up 0.6 per cent against the dollar at $1.1636, on news that a deal on migration had been reached.
But it was still unclear whether the wording of the summit’s conclusions would be enough to resolve a dispute in the German government, pitting Ms Merkel against her Bavarian coalition partners.
However, the chancellor could boast one victory — a strong reference in the final text to the need for EU member states to combat “secondary migration”, the phenomenon of asylum seekers crossing between member states. The issue goes to the heart of a row with the Bavarian CSU party that has threatened to bring down Ms Merkel’s government.
Much will still depend on bilateral deals that Ms Merkel strikes with other countries to try to limit the flow of migrants.
The accord, which was hammered out after almost nine hours of talks, says rescued migrants on EU territory should be sent to “controlled centres” across the bloc for “rapid and secure processing”. This would distinguish between irregular migrants earmarked for return and those in need of international protection, “for whom the principle of solidarity would apply”.
An Elysee aide said they would be established only in frontline countries and would resemble so-called “hotspots” set up in Greece in the wake of the 2015 migration crisis. The change in the language was largely symbolic to overcome Italy’s reticence to such hotspots at the time. Operational and financial resources would be significantly beefed up to give the Italian government an incentive to set up the new centres.
All measures would be voluntary — an important concession to central European states led by Hungary that have long opposed compulsory refugee relocation quotas.
Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s new prime minister, hailed the agreement as a sign of pan-European solidarity. “Italy is no longer alone after this EU summit,” he said.
Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, said: “It is not the best of agreements but it is an important agreement that changes the direction, and means we are going to continue in a European perspective to face this European challenge.”
Ms Merkel said it was a “good signal” that the EU’s 28 countries had agreed a common text. But she conceded: “We still have a lot of work to do to bridge the different views.”
The marathon session showed the limits to the common interests of the Eurosceptic governments now in power in Rome and Budapest, which share a hardline approach to immigration but are divided by their geography. Hungary is landlocked while Italy has seen thousands of migrants arrive at its coast via boat and wants other European countries to share the burden.
The language of the text on “controlled centres” leaves open several big questions, including where the new facilities would be located and where both successful and failed asylum claimants would be sent.
The leaders also endorsed plans to build processing centres outside the EU, probably in northern Africa, for migrants rescued at sea — an idea that has attracted broad support from governments, in contrast to the disagreements over internal asylum policy.
The agreement also called on members states to co-operate closely and take “all necessary internal legislative and administrative measures” to counter movements of asylum seekers across borders. It said such movements “risk jeopardising the integrity of the common European asylum system” and the EU’s passport-free Schengen area.
That was a win for Ms Merkel, who has been pressing for weeks for a pan-European approach to the issue of “secondary migration”. The problem goes to the heart of the dispute between the chancellor and her Bavarian coalition partners the CSU, who want to give German border police the right to turn away refugees already registered in other EU countries — a demand Ms Merkel rejected. In the end the CSU gave her until the end of the month to come up with a Europe-wide solution to the problem.
Emmanuel Macron, France’s president, said that the accord was an “important step” that brought “new ideas” into the fractious debate over migration policy. “France proposed some of those ideas, and they were followed,” he said. “We have succeeded in obtaining a European solution.”
Italy had escalated tensions by stalling the summit until a migration deal was reached. Rome blocked decisions on the economy, security and digital issues in the meeting’s opening session in Brussels as it sought “concrete” help to deal with its own influx of asylum seekers. One senior EU figure at the meeting described Italy as “holding us hostage”.
Italy recently presented a plan to change EU asylum rules to spread migrants and refugees across the bloc more broadly to ease its own burden. Until Rome made headway on reaching its goals, it had vowed to resist policies sought by Berlin that would involve sending migrants back to Italy who had illegally settled in northern EU countries.
Europe is not facing a crisis on anything like the scale of 2015, when thousands of migrants were arriving in the Greek islands on a daily basis. The European Council says the numbers illegally entering the EU have dropped 96 per cent since their peak in October 2015.
