EU home affairs ministers meeting in Luxembourg yesterday failed to agree on an emergency mechanism to redistribute migrants that land in Italy and Greece.
The proposal was made by the European Commission as part of a wider plan to tackle the migration phenomenon, but Member States are split over the redistribution of 40,000 migrants.
Eastern and central European countries insist on a voluntary mechanism to take in refugees, contrary to the mandatory quota proposed by the EU executive. Home Affairs Minister Carmelo Abela said he emerged from the meeting “less pessimistic” but insisted it was still a long road ahead before agreement would be reached.
“The language used by some countries that opposed the redistribution proposal before the meeting was less confrontational and more moderate during the meeting and this gave me cause for hope,” Mr Abela said after the meeting. The agreement will have to be hammered out next week during the European Council meeting of heads of government, but Brussels sources have indicated a decision is likely to be postponed until September.
Mr Abela said next week’s meeting would “not be an easy ride” because the political discussions were ongoing.
He said there was no mention of Italy’s Plan B during the meeting.
In the wake of resistance by some member States, Italy had warned it could go for Plan B by offering migrants residence permits that would enable them to travel freely to other Member States.
‘EU must deal with return of migrants’
Reuters reported that France, Italy and Germany agreed to join forces to identify migrants arriving by sea and to swiftly relocate them across the EU or send them back to their home countries if their claims for asylum in Europe were rejected.
Ministers from the three countries put on a show of unity after the arrival of thousands of migrants from Libya strained the resources of Italy and Greece and raised tensions with the northern European states that are the destinations of many migrants.
“France, together with Germany and Italy, supports a relocation and readmission mechanism,” French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said during joint press conference.
“Those who have no right to stay must be returned to their home country, and we agree that returns should increasingly be dealt with at EU level,” said Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano.
In a letter to ministers, the EU migration commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos, outlined new measures to make such repatriations more effective.
He proposed changing the mandate of the EU border protection agency, Frontex, to allow it to repatriate migrants on its own initiative and to support an individual EU government that wished to do so itself. At the moment, Frontex can only coordinate operations involving several EU countries.
To make the return policy more effective, the EU needs to sign agreements with the countries of origin of migrants in Africa or Asia, which to date have mostly been reluctant to take their citizens back.