The European Commission finds nothing wrong with Libya taking back illegal immigrants rescued on the high seas by Malta and Italy.

In the first unambiguous statement supporting the practice, the new Director General for Migration, Stefano Manservisi, defended the bilateral agreement which Italy signed with Libya in 2009 and which saw the North African state take back most of the migrants rescued in the Mediterranean.

The so-called push-back policy has come under fire from humanitarian organisations including the UN refugee agency UNHCR, which point to Libya's human rights record and the fact it is not a signatory to the Geneva Convention, a human rights treaty which guarantees the rights of asylum seekers.

Mr Manservisi argued that Libya was a signatory to the 1969 Addis Ababa Convention governing aspects of refugee problems in Africa, which binds Libya to principles which he said were similar to those of the UN convention, including cooperation with UNHCR.

His comments, however, come a few months after Libya, a country faced with a numerous reports of human rights abuses, shut down the UN refugee office in Tripoli.