Latest News | Southern EU Nations Urge for a New Migration and Asylum Deal and Beefed-up Surveillance
Get latest articles and stories on Latest News at LatestLY. Leaders of nine southern European countries called Friday for the EU to finalise a new migration and asylum deal, and to beef up efforts to prevent departures from North Africa during a summit in Malta.
Valletta, Sep 29 (AP) Leaders of nine southern European countries called Friday for the EU to finalise 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.
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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.
Meanwhile, the German humanitarian rescue group Sea-Watch released a video apparently showing a Libyan coast guard boat nearing a migrant boat, and then some 50 people falling into the water. Sea-Watch said the Libyan coast guard “rammed” the migrant boat, and then took the survivors aboard another ship.
Aid groups and human rights organisations 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 UN 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 fuelled 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.” (AP)
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)