EU divided on how to deal with migrants at sea
LUXEMBOURG, June 12 (Reuters) European Union interior ministers were divided today on how to deal with illegal migrants stranded at sea, with Malta facing resistance over its call to share them among EU countries.
The tiny Mediterranean island says it cannot cope with an influx of illegal migrants and wants the EU's 27 countries to share out those picked up outside the bloc's waters, in particular near Libya, according to the size of each EU state.
''The situation right now is just a complete mess, it's a free for all,'' Maltese Home Affairs Minister Tonio Borg told reporters as he arrived at the meeting.
''Everyone is leaving from two ports in Libya and each year 600 immigrants are dying - this is a very conservative estimate - on the threshold of Europe,'' he said.
But the French minister for immigration and national identity, Brice Hortefeux, rejected the idea of sharing illegal migrants among EU states.
''It seems very difficult. I do not see, technically, how we could do that,'' he told reporters in the margins of the meeting, echoing similar comments by several diplomats.
German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said Malta should not be left alone but told a news conference that agreeing on an allocation system would be ''a long road''.
The meeting in Luxembourg followed criticism of Malta for refusing to accept 27 people who spent three days clinging to fishing nets while it argued with Libya over who should rescue them.
They were eventually picked up by the Italian navy.
DEAL WOULD SPUR MIGRATION Diplomats said a deal was unlikely, given that EU countries had so far refused to share out refugees and migrants. A number of countries also fear that such a deal would further encourage would-be migrants to make the dangerous trip across the sea.
''I do not see how we can share out illegal migrants. It would give a bad signal to say 'you can come, we will save you, we will distribute you among ourselves','' a spokesman for the EU commissioner for migration, Franco Frattini, said yesterday.
Frattini accused Malta of failing to meet international obligations after it refused to take in the 27 shipwrecked Africans.
Malta and the European Commission want EU-wide guidelines over who is responsible for saving people at sea and on whose land they should be allowed to disembark.
The ministers rubber-stamped a deal today to set up a pool of on-call border guards for emergency operations.
But the bloc's border agency, Frontex, said this would not solve the problem. The pool of nearly 500 guards would be sent only on emergency operations and would not stay permanently, either around Malta or Spain's Canary Islands, it said.
''Frontex is not and will never be the panacea to problems of illegal migration,'' Frontex's director Ilkaa Laitinen said in a letter, adding that its mission was not to conduct search-and-rescue operations but to protect borders.
Rights groups have accused the EU of putting people at risk by strengthening its border controls.
Thousands are believed to die each year attempting perilous sea crossings to Europe.
REUTERS
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