Afghan refugees are temporarily sheltered at former Olympic hockey stadium in Athens, Greece, Oct. 1, 2015. (Xinhua/Marios Lolos)

STRASBOURG, Oct. 16 -- President of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) Anne Brasseur expressed her "shame" during a Thursday meeting with the press in Strasbourg, over the treatment of refugees in the ongoing crisis which has troubled Europe.

"I find it shameful that we speak of refugee quotas while it deals with human beings," declared the PACE president, who is not known for beating around the bush.

"It's a question of dignity. We cannot speak in this way of refugees," insisted Brasseur.

It is not the first time that Brasseur has openly criticized the behavior and the policies of European leaders regarding the refugee crisis.

"The 23 countries of the EU had the discussions of carpet salesmen!" she fired off most recently when the EU had finally reached an agreement for the "resettlement" of 120,000 refugees.

"In terms of human rights, we don't have a lesson to give when we see what is happening in certain European countries," deplored Brasseur, who warned several times regarding the degradation of the human rights situation.

Without question, the refugee crisis figures highly in the primary concerns of the PACE president, who doesn't spare her words.

"Europe as an international community has shielded its eyes. It should have acted much earlier, not only for moral reasons, but also in its own interests," emphasized the president, whose assembly gathers 324 parliamentarians coming from 47 European countries and representing 820 million citizens.

"I travelled several times to the Turkish border with Syria where two million refugees are piling up. Only 10 percent of them are in camps; the others are in the wilderness. And winter is coming quickly," said Brasseur in alarm.

"For these refugees, the delegations come and leave without anything happening," she continued before denouncing "a globalization of indifference."

"When I see people here who fight over peanuts, I cannot be proud of my country," she confided.

The PACE president refused nevertheless to give in to a pessimism which would lead to inaction.

"The migratory question must not in any case be an electoral question," she warned.

"This is not the way that we will confront the progression of extreme right parties who instrumentalize the fears of European citizens," she said.

"We cannot sweep away with the back of a hand the concerns of people facing the arrival of refugees and accuse them of being extremists on the right," she added.

A summit of European leaders held Thursday in Brussels was aimed at overseeing the status of the execution of measures decided on during the extraordinary summit of Sept. 23.