BRUSSELS –

European Union interior ministers agreed to shelter 120,000 refugees from Middle Eastern wars and civil strife, while continuing to feud over which countries will take them in.

The officials dealt with a small part of the refugee crisis at a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday, as a new study predicted that the EU could be the destination of 1 million migrants a year for some time to come.

"What we've decided today is an important building block, but not more," German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere told reporters. "It's not just a matter of relocating 120,000 people in need of help, we need more fundamental solutions."

EU government leaders will continue the search for answers at a summit on Wednesday, weighing plans for reinforced border surveillance, more efficient registration of new arrivals, and aid for front-line countries such as Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.

Pretensions to unity on the refugee question were undercut Tuesday when bigger countries in wealthier Western Europe forced through the decision on the quotas over the opposition of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Romania.

Hungary has been at the center of the maelstrom, with Prime Minister Viktor Orban sending newly arriving refugees on to Austria and fencing off the country's borders to prevent more from coming in.

Some 50,400 refugees will be relocated from Greece and 15,600 from Italy, two of the main entry points into the EU. The mechanism originally foresaw 54,000 coming from Hungary. Now that number will be added to the outflow from Greece and Italy, and potentially to other countries facing a sudden influx.

A dispute immediately broke out over whether the Eastern European dissenters will be required to house refugees against their will. In Bratislava, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico denounced the "dictate of the majority" as a "bad decision" and said Slovakia is willing to face legal consequences for ignoring it.

The legalities could take years to unfold in EU courts. In any event, the number of refugees left adrift by the Eastern objectors came to around 9,000. The bloc would need to allocate them elsewhere while it completes the implementation of an earlier decision to spread 40,000 refugees across member states.

"The refugee crisis can be brought under control, but make no mistake: it will take a tremendous amount of effort, it will take a long time," said Frans Timmermans, the commission's principal vice president.

However the EU divvied up the numbers, they were dwarfed by an Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast that the tide of migrants into Europe will rise to 1 million in 2015 from 630,000 last year and will remain around that level for most of the decade.

"It is unlikely that pressure from sending countries will ease," the Paris-based OECD said. "Europe has better legal and institutional systems in place for asylum-seekers and migrants than it did in the 1990s. However, these have not ensured a fair burden-sharing between countries."

Battles over burden-sharing played out on Tuesday, with Germany halting train traffic from Salzburg in neighboring Austria, the European Commission pleading for a "comprehensive solution," and EU-member Croatia shutting a highway crossing on the border with non-member Serbia, its enemy in the Yugoslavian civil war in the 1990s.

"This is Croatia's brutal attack on Serbia and an attempt to destroy the Serbian economy," Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic said in Belgrade. Serbia late Tuesday gave Croatia 30 hours to resolve the border dispute or face political and economic reprisals.