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EU interior ministers will hold crisis talks next week, officials announced Thursday, after a row erupted between France and Italy over the arrival of migrants rescued at sea.
Diplomats in Brussels that an extraordinary meeting of the Home Affairs council would take place on Friday, November 25, as Brussels attempts to resolve the dispute.
“Ministers will address the current situation in all migratory routes,” the European Union’s Czech presidency said.
The advent of a new, far-right-led government in Italy with a hardline stance on migration has focused fresh attention on the issue, which has long been simmering in the European Union.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni wants other EU nations to shoulder more of the burden of taking in irregular migrants and appears ready to force the issue to the top of the European agenda.
Her country — along with Cyprus, Greece and Malta — is unhappy that a voluntary European mechanism to manage migrant flows is not doing enough to take the pressure off them.
This month Italy refused access to an NGO ship, the Ocean Viking, carrying 234 migrants rescued in the Mediterranean.
France allowed the vessel to dock at its port city of Toulon, but suspended a plan to take 3,500 refugees currently in Italy, part of the European distribution pact.
Meloni hit back, calling France’s response “aggressive” and “unjustified”.
France has so far also rejected asylum applications from 44 of the 234 migrants disembarked in Toulon and says they will be returned to their countries of origin.
Of those allowed to stay, France and Germany will take in around a third, with the remainder going to other EU nations who have volunteered to take in a share.
Migration into the European Union via other routes, particularly through the Western Balkans, is also concerning EU member states.
After criticism from Brussels that Serbia, a non-EU country which borders the bloc, was acting as a staging ground for irregular migrants seeking to enter the European union, Belgrade announced it was tightening its visa policy.
Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic said Wednesday Tunisians and Burundians would now need visas to enter his country.
The European Commission last month warned it was not ruling out scrapping visa-waiver access for Serbians if Belgrade did not tamp down irregular migration.
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