Luxembourg - The question of how to calm the waves of illegal migration sweeping into Europe across the Mediterranean Sea reached the European Union's upper levels on Thursday, even as 18 migrants were reported lost at sea off Spain. "We are all very aware that the situation is quite complicated and problematic, and that many people suffer from this," Swedish Immigration Minister Tobias Billstrom said at a meeting with EU interior ministers in Luxembourg.
In recent months, Italy, Greece, Malta and Cyprus have repeatedly called on other EU members to help them deal with the rising tide of illegal migrants crossing the Mediterranean to land on their shores.
The European Commission, the EU's executive, wants to set up a "pilot project" based on a "voluntary effort of solidarity ... involving a resettlement of persons under international protection," EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot said.
That proposal is "interesting, but not sufficient," Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said.
But ministers from other EU states stopped short of offering to take large numbers of migrants from the Mediterranean, instead calling for a holistic and long-term solution to the problem.
"There is no quick fix to the problems at the southern sea border and the Mediterranean as a whole: we have to work with long-term goals, we have to see to it that we develop good cooperation with countries of transit and origin," Billstrom said.
The EU should also help the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR, begin work in Libya - a key route for migration from Africa to Europe - to receive and identify asylum seekers, Barrot said.
German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble stressed that no relocation programme would deal with the economic inequality which is the main driver of migration.
"We can't solve the problem of poverty by bringing them all into Europe," he said.
The debate came even as Spanish officials said that 18 African migrants were feared drowned in a bid to cross illegally to Spain.
