Responding to the vote in today’s Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting, European Conservatives and Reformists Group Home Affairs spokesman Timothy Kirkhope, said:

“My greatest fear is that forcing such a divisive issue to a vote will have negative consequences in the long run. All 28 EU countries need to work together to manage this crisis and alienating major European states makes finding common solutions even harder.

“This is not a long term solution to this crisis; it is a sticking plaster, and the way it has been handled diminishes much of the good will that will be needed to find genuine long term and more permanent solutions.

“We hear a lot about ‘solidarity’ in the EU. Enforcing a plan on a country that is strongly opposed to it is not solidarity, it is compulsion.”