The EU's executive Commission on Wednesday earmarked an additional 1.7 billion euros ($1.9 billion) to help the bloc tackle the continent's biggest refugee crisis since World War II.

"We have taken a decision to propose an additional 1.7 billion euros," EU budget commissioner Kristalina Georgieva told a press conference ahead of an emergency EU summit.

The funds will be used "inside the European Union to improve emergency reception facilities and the capacity of the most overburdened countries to cope," Georgieva said.

They will also be used to help "refugees outside the European Union, primarily via the World Food Program, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees and the International Committee of the Red Cross but also other humanitarian organizations, especially those who put their people at risk operating inside Syria and Iraq," she said.

"We very much hope that member states would match the deployment [of funds] from the Commission," she added.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini told the press conference that one reason refugees headed to Europe was because funding had been cut in camps in the Middle East which house mainly people fleeing Syria.

At the same time, the European Commission also warned that 19 EU member states, including France and Germany, faced possible sanctions for failing to implement rules on handling asylum seekers coming to Europe.

"It is about time that member states stepped up to the plate and did what they need to do," European Commission Vice President Frans Timmermans said as EU leaders gathered in Brussels for an emergency summit on the migrant crisis.

"A common asylum system can only work if every country respects the rules," Timmermans said after officials met to prepare for the summit.

The 28-nation EU has established a whole series of rules governing the handling of asylum seekers in Europe, from their arrival, to registration, treatment and rights pending a decision.

The system was completed in July this year but the flood of hundreds of thousands of migrants fleeing war and turmoil across the Middle East and Africa in recent months have strained it to the limit and exposed divisions within the European Union.

EU interior ministers agreed Tuesday to relocate some 120,000 processed asylum seekers around the bloc but this is an emergency measure and falls outside the new system.

Timmermans said the Commission, the EU's executive arm, had taken the first step in 40 infringement procedures, in addition to 35 already opened, by sending formal letters of notice to the concerned countries.

He said only five member states had fully transposed the EU rules into national law and urged their peers to follow suit quickly.

Greece, Italy and Hungary, which have borne the brunt of the migrant inflow, are also on the list.