According to the commission’s 15th report on resettlemente programmes, Portugal received 1,116 refugees transferred from Greece and 299 from Italy.

Under the scheme, Portugal is to receive a further 1,536 people.

In all, until 4 September, a total of 27,695 people have been transferred - 19,244 from Greece and 8,451 from Italy – under a programme in which, as well as EU states, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland are participating.

That number represents less than one third of the 98,000 that EU member states had committed to redistributing by September, according to the commission.

"Most of the migrants who arrive in Italy are not eligible” for resettlement, the European commissioner for migration, Dimitris Avramopóulos, said at a news conference. “In fact, the number of people to be resettled is much lower than was foreseen."

At present, according to the commission, there are some 2,800 people awaiting relocation from Greece and another 2,000 in Italy waiting to find out if they are eligible.

The commission welcomed the fact that Austria has also begun taking people resettled from Italy and the first resettlements from there to Slovakia have begun.

On the other hand, other EU states are still violating their legal obligations, by failing to take in a single person (Hungary and Poland) or not making available any places for more than a year (the Czech Republic) – prompting the commission to start legal action against them.

As for refugees in camps outside the EU, Portugal has so far received 76 of the 191 it had offered to take, with 63 of those coming from Egypt, 12 from Turkey and one from Morocco.