Juncker: We will continue to work flat-out to bring common, European solutions.

DPA
Brussels
European countries need to provide an extra €330.7mn ($369.9mn) for the EU budget in order to deliver promised responses to the migration crisis, the bloc’s executive said yesterday.
Europe is contending with its most significant influx of migrants and asylum seekers since World War II, which has stretched national resources thin.
The European Union has pledged a number of actions to get a handle on the influx and help its worst-affected member states.
The European Commission proposed budget amendments yesterday to fund these measures.
But national contributions to the EU budget are often a source of strife between Brussels and member states.
“We will continue to work flat-out to bring common, European solutions,” the president of the commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, said in a statement.
Under its proposal, member states would commit the extra €330.7mn this year, but not pay them out until next year.
Those funds would be combined with €70.6mn in reallocated EU money to offer emergency support to most-affected member states; hire 120 people for the EU border agency Frontex, the law-enforcement agency Europol and the European Asylum Support Office (EASO); and provide more aid to countries outside the EU hosting Syrian refugees.
In addition, the commission plans to funnel another €400mn in aid from this year to these non-European Union countries and to humanitarian organisations working in refugee camps, notably the UN refugee agency UNHCR and the World Food Programme.
EU governments and the European Parliament have to give their approval before most of the combined €801.3mn can be disbursed.
The commission called on the two sides to fast-track their decision procedures.
“Europe is facing the consequences of one of the biggest crises in its recent history,” EU Budget Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva said. “We are using the EU budget in a swift and flexible way to address this crisis.”
For next year, the commission is planning to make another €900mn available for the migration crisis response.
A budget amendment for this funding is due to be submitted this month.