A small inflatable boat carrying migrants from Afghanistan is towed by rescuers of the Refugee Rescue NGO, near Skala Sikamias, on the island of Lesbos, September 16, 2019. /VCG Photo
A bid to broaden a "pilot" migrant-relocation scheme across the EU met with a tepid response Monday, auguring badly for stalled plans to reform the bloc's crumbling asylum policy.
EU interior ministers discussed the relocation scheme hatched two weeks ago by four countries – France, Germany, Italy and Malta – but in the end only three other member states gave their support: Luxembourg, Ireland and Portugal.
The plan, called the Malta Declaration, calls for participants to voluntarily take in a share of asylum-seekers rescued from overcrowded boats in the Mediterranean after pushing off from North Africa. The scheme is temporary, to last six months.
Tuesday's EU meeting in Luxembourg came a day after another tragedy along that route, in which 13 migrant women, some pregnant, drowned when their craft carrying around 50 people capsized.
Despite ministers' agreement that more needed to be done, most EU states said they were already struggling to cope with the wake of a 2015 migrant crisis, when more than one million mostly Syrian refugees flowed into Europe.
(L-R) Italy's Interior Minister Luciana Lamorgese, European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos, Malta's Interior Minister Michael Farrugia, Finland's Interior Minister Maria Ohisalo, and Germany's Interior Minister Horst Seehofer address a press conference at Fort St. Angelo, Birgu, September 23, 2019. /VCG Photo
Although the migrant numbers have greatly fallen since then, because of controversial EU deals done with Turkey and Libya, they are starting to rise once more on a more eastern route, from Turkey to Greece.
"The situation in Greece is really comparable in the islands to what happened in 2015," said Jean Asselborn, Luxembourg's foreign minister.
On the Malta Declaration, he said "things didn't move fundamentally" in terms of just three more countries signing on.
A much bigger number – over a dozen, he said – would have suggested an appetite for the scheme to form the basis of a permanent asylum policy for the entire EU.
Instead it indicates a continued deadlock in efforts to replace the current system, which requires countries on Europe's southern rim, mainly Italy, Greece and Spain, to host arriving migrants while their asylum requests are looked at.
Refugees and migrants take part in a demonstration against their living conditions at the Moria camp on the island of Lesbos, October 1, 2019. /VCG Photo
However, Dimitris Avramopoulos, EU's commissioner for migration, stressed the meeting was only an initial step and "more discussions were needed".
Another meeting at a technical level would take place in Brussels on Friday, he said.
He noted the "huge pressure" Greece was once again under in terms of arriving asylum seekers, and said the incoming European Commission, which starts work next month, would make finding a comprehensive refugee policy a priority.
Since 2016, at least 19,000 migrants have drowned or gone missing while making the perilous Mediterranean crossing, often in unseaworthy vessels, according to the UN's International Organization for Migration.
Yet some EU states are wary that the Malta Declaration could act as a "pull" factor, encouraging more boat crossings.
"Saving human lives does not mean that we implement a distribution mechanism," said Austrian Interior Minister Wolfgang Peschorn.