Leaders of nine southern European countries called Friday for the EU to finalize a new migration and asylum deal, and to beef up efforts to prevent departures from North Africa during a summit in Malta. The gathering came as another shipwreck drama unfolded off Libya’s coast.
A joint statement issued at the end of the meeting said the needs of front-line countries — such as Italy — that receive the vast majority of migrants, must be “adequately met.”
It said the European Union as a bloc must strengthen its response by beefing up surveillance operations of Europe’s external borders to prevent departures and break up human trafficking networks.
The one-day huddle included host Malta, as well as Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain. Slovenia and Croatia, which have coastlines on the Adriatic Sea, were added to the so-called “Med Group” in 2021.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Charles Michel also attended the meeting, which came ahead of next week’s informal gathering of the EU’s 27 nations in Granada, Spain.
Aid groups and human rights organizations have denounced the EU’s deal with Libya to finance the Libyan coast guard so it can increase patrols to bring migrants back to Libya. The U.N. has said abuses are rife at Libyan migrant detention camps.
The Malta meeting comes as a deadline approaches for the bloc to approve a comprehensive migration and asylum reform or risk it unravelling.
Under current EU rules, the nation where asylum-seekers arrive must shelter them while their applications are processed. Front-line countries like Italy have said the deal puts an undue burden on them, but little progress has been made in the three years since a new EU pact was unveiled.
Member states bicker over which country should take charge of migrants when they arrive and whether other countries should be obligated to help, debates that have fueled doubt as to whether an overhaul is possible before European elections in June.
For the pact to get through, officials and lawmakers say, an agreement on all 10 parts of the plan must be sealed by February. A new European Commission and European Parliament will start work next year and they may want to modify the pact, raising the risk that it might unravel.
In the final statement from Malta, the leaders called for EU states “to step up negotiations” to reach an agreement “before the end of the current legislative term.”
