EU in asylum shake-up to share burden

A divided European Union yesterday unveiled a fresh plan to shake up its failed asylum policy and force countries to share the burden of its unprecedented migrant crisis.

"We need to reform our European asylum system," Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans told reporters in Brussels, as the bloc battles its worst migration crisis since World War II.

Timmermans said he outlined two possible new approaches. The first, dubbed "Dublin plus", would be to keep the existing system but add a "corrective fairness mechanism" to redistribute migrants from a member state grappling with a sudden influx of refugees.

A majority of countries support this option, a European diplomat told AFP. A second, more radical, proposal would be to automatically distribute migrants across the EU based on member states' population, wealth and capacity to take in newcomers.