The EU Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, has sent a letter to the Norwegian Minister of Migration, Sylvi Listhaug, urging the country to “increase their efforts to bring in refugees from North Africa and the Horn of Africa”, Dagbladet reports.

Listhaug received the audacious letter despite the fact that Norway has repeatedly chosen not to become a member of the EU. This is because Avramopoulos sent it to all EU member states as well as those in the Schengen area that are not part of the EU, which includes Norway.

In the letter, Avramopoulos emphasised that it is as important to help “refugees” in Libya, Egypt, Niger, Ethiopia and Sudan, as it is to help those in Syria. He therefore encourages Listhaug and the other recipients to be “as ambitious as possible when assessing [their] efforts for the quota refugees”.

Avramopoulos also expressed his support for the UNHCR’s request to transfer an additional 40,000 “quota refugees” from Libya and other countries in that region. Dagbladet writes that the UN had asked Norway and other Western nations to commit to new quotas by 15th September.

In March this year, Avramopoulos infamously claimed that the EU will need to accept six million immigrants in the future, seemingly without specifying the reason for why the union would need this.