EU southern states step up calls for solidarity in managing mass migration

Europe’s southern states have stepped up calls for solidarity in managing mass migration to the bloc saying the burden has to be shared more justly with other European Union partners.

Highlighting the deep divisions over the issue, politicians from countries along Europe’s Mediterranean rim said a proposed migration pact fell far short of resolving the crisis equitably.

"In its current format, the pact does not provide sufficient reassurances to the frontline member states," the interior and migration ministers of Greece, Italy, Spain, Cyprus and Malta said in a joint statement after meeting in Athens.

The blueprint, which aims to overhaul the EU’s asylum and migration policies, was put forward by the European Commission last autumn.

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Still under discussion, it foresees replacing what Brussels has acknowledged as ad-hoc solutions to one of Europe’s greatest challenges with a “predictable and reliable migration management system”.

But the new asylum policies have been heavily criticised by the countries most affected by migration flows and EU member states in the east.

While frontline nations argue it doesn’t go far enough to ensure fair distribution of responsibility within the union, Visegrad countries, led by Hungary’s far-right prime minister Viktor Orban, reject the migration plan on the basis of it requiring the 27-country bloc to accept asylum-seeker quotas as part of a “compulsory solidarity mechanism”.

Addressing reporters at the Athens meeting, Italy’s interior minister, Luciana Lamorgese, said it was crucial the Mediterranean countries formed a “united front”.

“Six months after the official launch of negotiations for a new European migration and asylum pact, and despite having presented different proposals regarding the common position of our countries, our basic concerns continue to exist,” she said. “The mechanisms of solidarity remain unclear.”

Margaritis Schinas, the European Commission's vice-president and chief co-ordinator of the pact, also said it was time for solidarity to be reconciled with geography. "We are here [because these] five countries of the Mediterranean south are forced, by geography, to carry a disproportionately large burden of the refugee [crisis] for all of Europe, " he told reporters. "We have reached the point where we have to reconcile the geography of Europe with the solidarity of Europe – solidarity has to be seen in practice." – (Guardian)