EU ministers will gather for an extraordinary meeting in two weeks' time to discuss how to tackle the refugee crisis which has reached "unprecedented proportions".
The increasing number of people who have died travelling from conflict-hit countries to Europe by land and at sea has forced governments to respond.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has again urged other European Union countries to accept a greater share of the refugees.
Luxembourg, which holds the rotating EU Presidency, called interior ministers from all 28 member states to the talks on 14 September, saying: "The situation of migration phenomena outside and inside the European Union has recently taken unprecedented proportions."
It comes as British Home Secretary Theresa May called for the free movement of people within the EU to be limited to those who have a job.
Writing in the Sunday Times, Mrs May said that EU rules were "the biggest single factor" preventing Britain from reaching its immigration targets.
"When it was first enshrined, free movement meant the freedom to move to a job, not the freedom to cross borders to look for work or claim benefits," she wrote.
"Yet last year, four out of 10 EU migrants, 63,000 people, came here with no definite job whatsoever.
"We must take some big decisions, face down powerful interests and reinstate the original principle underlying free movement within the EU".
Mrs May's call came days after new figures showed that net migration to Britain was an estimated 330,000 in the year to March - the highest number of record.
Europe has been shaken by a string of recent tragedies. Just days ago, 71 people, including four children, were found dead in a lorry in Austria.
And three children needed hospital treatment after they were rescued from a separate lorry carrying 26 migrants, also in Austria.
In the Mediterranean, around 250 people died as two boats full of people capsized last Thursday in the latest tragedy at sea. The bodies of two suspected migrants found floating in the Mediterranean were recovered by the Italian Navy on Saturday.
Ireland is currently taking 1,120 in two resettlement programmes, with Denmark taking 1,000 and the UK 2,200.
In contrast, Germany will take 10.500 of the target 60,000 migrants due to be resettled from the migrants who have arrived in Greece and Italy
Mairead McGuinness is vice president of the EU Parliament.
She told Newstalk Breakfast Europe needs to tackle the problem, including trafficking, at source.
