The president of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz this morning declined to take a position on the Maltese prime minister's threat to veto EU initiatives if the European Council does not agree on concrete solidarity on immigration.

Replying to a question by the Times of Malta, Mr Schulz said that Malta was right to ask for intervention by the EU and he was sure that Dr Muscat would make his point strongly during tonight's EU council meeting.

He said that he would await Dr Muscat's intervention to see whether Malta would  convince the other member states.

Following a meeting in Brussels with the mayor of Lampedusa Giusi Nicolini prior to this evening's summit, Mr Schulz said that the EU needs to change its rules to make sure that migrants can enter the EU legally. He said that he would also make this point during his intervention at the summit.

Sign up to our free newsletters

Get the best updates straight to your inbox:
Please select at least one mailing list.

You can unsubscribe at any time by clicking the link in the footer of our emails. We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By subscribing, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing.