“The main objective on Monday will be to buy time to fix Europe’s malfunctioning asylum system.”

The key issues to be discussed at the summit were the protection of the EU’s outer border, the establishment of “hot spots” at border points and humanitarian support for Greece.

Redistribution was “not at the top of the agenda”, Urs Pötzsch, a legal expert at Berlin’s Centre for European Politics, said in an interview with the Guardian. It has been clear for some time that the appetite for redistribution quotas in Europe was minimal, he said. “The so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ involving France that German politicians talked about for a while has turned out to be practically non-existent.” The current strategy, involved “solving the refugee problem at as geographically remote a location from central Europe as possible", said Pötzsch.