European leaders are to stage an emergency summit next week to wrestle with the EU’s worst humanitarian crisis, a refugee emergency that has also pitched the union into one of its most bitter political conflicts, The Guardian reported on Friday.

Amid ever deepening division and a war of words between eastern and western Europe over how to cope with hundreds of thousands of arrivals, Donald Tusk, president of the European council, called the special summit for next Wednesday after Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, demanded he to do so.

Among the factors at issue is the question of compulsory EU refugee quotas, to take the load from Germany and Sweden, which are bearing the brunt of the influx of newcomers.

Source: MENA