(ANSA-AFP) - BRUSSELS, 23 SET - The European Commission launched an effort Wednesday to rally sceptical member states around a plan to better share responsibility for settling refugees and sending rejected asylum seekers home.

The long-awaited proposal for a "New Pact on Migration and Asylum" comes two weeks after a devastating fire in an overcrowded camp on the Greek island of Lesbos, and five years after Europe's last major migrant crisis.

It proposes that EU member states who do not want to volunteer to house more migrants -- and reduce pressure on Italy and Greece, where most arrivals land -- can instead take charge of sending those whose asylum requests are rejected back to their homelands. "We want to live up to our values. And at the same time face the challenges of a globalised world," the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said, warning that old system "no longer works" The proposal disappointed migrants' rights activists and refugee agencies, who had hoped for compulsory quotas for refugee settlement and an end to a "Fortress Europe" ringed by squalid refugee camps. "It's a compromise between xenophobia and cowardice," tweeted professor of environmental geopolitics Francois Gemenne. But the plan is likely, nevertheless, to face a rough reception in national capitals, many of which are keen to see the EU take ownership of the problem, without wanting to take charge of large numbers of refugees on their own soil. (ANSA-AFP).