Originally posted by the Voice of America.
Voice of America content is produced by the Voice of America,
a United States federal government-sponsored entity, and is in
the public domain.


EU Divided Again on Question of Migrant Burden-Sharing

Jamie Dettmer

   ROME - Interior ministers from five European Union countries converged
   on the Mediterranean island of Malta Monday to finalize a deal which
   would see a redistribution of asylum-seekers who reach the southern
   shores of Europe from North Africa.

   EU officials hope the voluntary burden-sharing scheme being sealed at
   Monday's mini-summit between France, Germany, Italy and Malta will
   later be taken up by other EU states and serve as a model for northern
   and central European states to also take in asylum-seekers, lifting the
   migration pressure on the "frontline" states of Italy and Greece.

   But Hungarian officials have already warned that Budapest will not
   participate under any circumstances, arguing the time-limited and
   voluntary four-nation deal is a surreptitious bid to revive the
   burden-sharing mechanisms Brussels tried to impose on all EU states at
   the height of the migration crisis in 2015 and 2016.

   Recent upstick
   The number of migrants landing in Europe via the Mediterranean Sea has
   dropped sharply in recent years.

   Last year, the U.N. documented about 115,000 arrivals, down from
   170,000 in 2017 and over one million in 2015. But there has been an
   uptick in recent weeks with a rise in numbers arriving on the Greek
   islands from Turkey, adding to overcrowding in squalid refugee camps on
   the Greek Aegean islands of Lesbos and Samos.

.