'Special difficulty'

During a visit to Malta, EC President Barroso urged EU states to help Malta on immigration, from EUBusiness:

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Friday he recognised the "special difficulty" Malta faced from illegal immigration and said member states must help it tackle the problem. "They must put the principle of solidarity into action by providing help to Malta and other member states in managing the influx of illegal immigrants," he told Malta's parliament. The island EU nation, with a population of around 400,000, has rescued some 7,000 people in waters off its coast in the last five years, with scores picked up -- some clinging to tuna farm cages, others dead -- in May alone.

Barroso heard pleas from Malta's government and opposition for EU help with the problem, with Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi saying that "last summer more died crossing the Mediterranean than in the Lebanon conflict." The EU Commission president described these events as a "human tragedy for desperate people who are ruthlessly and unforgiveably exploited", and acknowledged the difficulties Malta faced. Many people in the rest of Europe were "simply unaware that the search and rescue area and jurisdiction of Malta is larger than the land mass of the United Kingdom, clearly disproportionate to its resources," he said..

Migration would be a central theme of the EU-Africa summit later this year, he added, and the EU Commission would draw up practical guidelines for managing Europe's external border, covering search and rescue operations. "The commission cannot solve all the problems, not least (because) we don't have boats or planes. But I recognise that more should be done, especially by member states," Barroso said. "Member states have planes, member states have boats, have resources which they can put at the disposal of a member state that has special difficulty. Some political resistance is yet to be overcome." ...