German Chancellor Angela Merkel urged the EU to agree to a proportional distribution of refugees with no limits on actual numbers, going much further than plans unveiled by the European Commission Wednesday.

"We need a binding agreement on the binding distribution of refugees according to fair criteria between member states," she told parliament.

"We cannot say we will share out a fixed number of refugees. Rather, we need to think about how we can deal with the refugees who arrive here.

"We cannot just fix a ceiling and say I don't care about anything above that," she added.

Under European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker's plan, EU states would share out 160,000 refugees.