Migration

Thousands of immigrants, mostly from west and north Africa arrived on Spain’s Canary Islands, Malta and Italian territory in the Mediterranean, highlighting a problem with securing the EU’s southern borders.

Finland set out an ambitious programme at the informal justice and home affairs ministerial meeting in Tampere in September with a focus on creating a common EU system for handling immigration and asylum.

It proposed using EU funding for the processing, reception, maintenance and possible return costs of asylum-seekers and illegal immigrants with national administrations having responsibility for such people including readmitting them if they went to another member state.

But there was no appetite among the member states for paying for a current problem on Europe’s southern borders when all states faced financial burdens because of immigration.

Appeals by the Commission for solidarity in migration largely fell on deaf ears: only three member states gave equipment for patrols in September by the EU’s border agency Frontex in the waters off the Canary Islands. Some critics accused the Finns of not being sufficiently engaged on migration.

Thousands of immigrants, mostly from west and north Africa arrived on Spain’s Canary Islands, Malta and Italian territory in the Mediterranean, highlighting a problem with securing the EU’s southern borders.