Solidarity mechanisms

EU unlikely to meet Malta's call for help with illegal migration, from The Earth Times:

European Union countries are unlikely to meet Malta's call for more solidarity in dealing with illegal immigrants and refugees, EU diplomats said Monday. While member states had discussed the issue of burden-sharing in illegal migration for more than 15 years, "so far, physical burden- sharing has not happened," EU diplomats said. Faced with daily boatloads of mainly African migrants, tiny Malta has suggested that the EU set up a solidarity mechanism under which member states would have to admit a number of would-be immigrants in proportion with that EU country's national population.

However, EU diplomats hinted that the bloc's governments were unlikely to agree on such a scheme as the issue already had been under discussion since the mid 1990s, when the EU saw an influx of refugees following the conflicts in former Yugoslavia. Germany was then in the frontline, admitting more than 500,000 refugees from the Balkan states, EU diplomats said. At the time, EU governments even disagreed on giving financial support to frontline member states, diplomats said, adding that governments could also refuse to make money available for Malta.

EU interior ministers are due to discuss Malta's appeal for more solidarity between the EU's 27 member states following a recent series of refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. EU officials have accused Maltese authorities of failing to meet their international duties to save lives by refusing to admit migrants rescued by vessels outside its search and rescue area. Officials in Malta deny they have ever left migrants at sea in distress. Last week, 27 shipwrecked Africans spent three days clinging to tuna nets in the Mediterranean while Malta and Libya argued over who should rescue them. Italian navy forces eventually picked them up...

BBC News: Malta wants EU help; International Herald Tribune: EU Nations refuse to split up refugee burden.