EU leaders struck a hard-fought deal to send migrants rescued at sea to centres across the bloc after talks pared back a more ambitious plan pitched by France and Italy’s new prime minister on his full summit debut.
The battle over migration reopened old political divisions and an agreement was only reached just before dawn on Friday, after Rome and Paris conceded the new measures to share asylum seekers would be voluntary.
The gathering in Brussels was billed as a make-or-break negotiation for Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, but turned instead into a rerun of showdowns between Italy and anti-immigration leaders in Hungary and the Czech Republic, who rejected automatic refugee quotas.