Italy is in talks with other European Union states about sharing the burden of rescuing migrants crossing the Mediterranean in crowded boats from North Africa, senior officials meeting in Milan said yesterday.

So far this year, more than 63,000 migrants have arrived in Italy by sea, according to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), surpassing the previous record of around 62,000 set in the whole of 2011, the year of the “Arab Spring” uprisings.

But more than 500 have died trying to make the perilous sea crossing, including 12 on Sunday when their boat capsized off the coast of Tripoli, Libya, the UNHCR said yesterday.

Yesterday, Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano repeated a call for Europe’s border control agency Frontex to take over Italy’s mission, known as Mare Nostrum or “Our Sea” and costing the navy €9 million a month. After meeting with EU interior ministers in Milan, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom said she was discussing with Alfano what was needed for a “scaled-down” version of Mare Nostrum.

But she warned that Frontex alone would not be enough and that member states would have to contribute directly, and there was as yet no time frame for a possible EU substitution of Italy.

“Frontex is a small agency and cannot take over Mare Nostrum tomorrow. We will need more assets from the member states and that’s why we are asking Italy to sit together with us to try to identify exactly what would be needed,” she said.

Italy – along with Spain, Greece and Malta – have been left mostly on their own to manage the growing number of migrants who seek to enter the EU in boats departing from North Africa, partly because increasing anti-immigrant sentiment in countries like Britain and France makes it unpopular to help out.