European home affairs ministers will meet on September 14 in Brussels to ramp up efforts to cope with the wave of refugees, Luxembourg, which holds the EU Council presidency, said on Sunday.
The calls came days after the Austrian police found the dead bodies of 71 refugees in an abandoned truck last week.
As the refugees' and asylum seekers' death toll on recent land and sea journeys on their way to Europe continues to escalate, the interior ministers will discuss proposals about how to react to the surge of migrants and refugees reaching European borders.
The United Nations High Commissions for Refugees, or UNHCR, called on EU members on Aug. 26 for a unified response to the crisis.
Last week, thousands of refugees crossed into Macedonian after the border security officials effectively lifted the hours-long blockade and then entered Serbia in hopes of making their way into EU.
"The situation of the migration phenomena outside and inside the European Union has recently taken unprecedented proportions," the Luxembourg government said in a statement.
"In order to assess the situation on the ground, the political actions under way and to discuss the next steps in order to strengthen the European response, the Luxembourg minister for immigration and asylum, Jean Asselborn, decided to convene an extraordinary JHA [justice and home affairs] Council," the statement read.
Earlier, responding to concerns that Europe is acting too slowly, the European Union's three largest members, Germany, France and Britain, issued a joint call on Sunday for a special ministerial meeting in the next two weeks - instead of waiting for a planned session in October - to find measures to better cope with the thousands of migrants arriving daily in the bloc.
The joint call also emphasized that reception centers should be set up urgently in Italy and Greece in order to register new arrivals, and for a common EU list of "safe countries of origin" to be established.
Luxembourg said the meeting would focus on policies on sending some migrants home and measures to prevent human trafficking.
The number of refugees reaching the EU's borders reached nearly 340,000 during the first seven months of the year, up from 123,500 during the same period in 2014, according to the EU border agency, Frontex.
At least 2,500 migrants have died in the same period, most of them drowning in the Mediterranean after arduous journeys fleeing war, oppression or poverty in Syria and other parts of the Middle East and Africa or beyond.
The Italian coastguard said some 1,600 migrants had been rescued in the Mediterranean and brought to Italy over the weekend.
Germany, which is expecting to receive 800,000 refugees this year, called on its neighboring countries to do more.
Meanwhile, Hungary announced that it will change its asylum laws to tighten its borders and return the refugees who crossed the borders this weekend to Serbia. The Hungarian government moreover said it will deploy 2,100 police officers to help control its border. The government also discussed about sending its military to the southern border with Serbia, as record numbers of refugees are trying to enter the state.
