Migration and the acceptance of asylum seekers has fast become a battleground between the U.K. and European Union, as relations between the two parties deteriorate just days after a general election.
Tensions were heightened after the U.K.'s center-right Conservative Party was re-elected to government in a general election last week. The party's leader and U.K. Prime Minister, David Cameron, has promised to hold a referendum on membership of the EU by 2017, making a potential "Brexit" - or British exit from the EU - a sore point in cross-Channel relations.
The governor of the Bank of England said on Thursday that the government should act with "appropriate speed" in holding the referendum, according to the Financial Times newspaper, due to concerns about the business uncertainty that the impending vote could cause. (Tweet This)
On Wednesday, the EU's executive arm unveiled proposals suggesting that some member states - including the U.K. - will have to take in more migrants looking for asylum in Europe.
The plans include measures to increase funding and resources for the EU's maritime border-protection operation, Triton, but also "resettlement" and "relocation" measures.
First Vice-President of the European Commission, Frans Timmermans, said in a statement Wednesday that by the end of this month a "temporary relocation mechanism" would be proposed, in an effort to relieve the "exceptional pressure" on frontline countries -- such as Greece and Italy -- where migrants from northern Africa and the Middle East tend to arrive.
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"People in need, who have already reached our shores, will be distributed to other member states who will then take care of their reception and asylum processing," Timmermans said.
There are also plans to resettle 20,000 migrants in the EU over the next two years, with quotas set out for each country.
The desperate situation has been thrown into stark relief this year, with several high-profile migrant disasters. A number of boats, crowded with migrants, have capsized and some 1,750 migrants have died in 2015 alone, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
Timmermans conceded that the EU's proposals were "challenging" and would "prompt debate and attract criticism," but stressed: "It is not acceptable for people around the EU to say, 'yes, stop people dying in the Mediterranean' and at the same time remain silent when the question is raised of what should happen to these people once they were saved."