Brussels -- The European Union's interior ministers agreed Thursday on a common set of principles guiding member states in the way they manage the influx of non-EU nationals.

The European Pact on Immigration and Asylum, which is due to be formally adopted by EU leaders at their October summit, seeks to improve the management of legal immigration, tighten controls on illegal immigrants and construct a common asylum policy.

"The aim of the pact is to avoid the two obvious potential pitfalls: the creation of a European fortress, and the total opening up to illegal immigration," said Brice Hortefeux, French minister of immigration, who chaired the council meeting because France currently holds the EU presidency.

"I am persuaded that we have avoided those pitfalls," he added.

The pact is backed by millions of euros in EU funds to enforce the repatriation of unwanted migrants and to help developing countries persuade their citizens to stay at home. It also calls on governments to crack down on EU employers who hire illegal immigrants.

But critics argue that the final, watered-down version agreed by ministers in Brussels on Thursday is ineffective and gives too great a voice to national governments.

For instance, the pact calls on EU countries to attract more highly skilled workers from outside the bloc.

But it leaves governments with the power to decide who and how many of them should be admitted in their own countries.

In this context, plans by the European Commission for a EU-wide Blue Card -- granting better working and living conditions to non-EU professionals -- have been effectively sunk by governments' insistence that they should establish their own rules on who can qualify.

And while its introduction is not expected to happen before 2011, countries like the Czech Republic insist that Germany, Belgium, Austria and Denmark should first open up their labor markets to workers from those Eastern European countries that joined the EU over the past four years.

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