Four EU countries prepare paper for burden sharing on immigration

High ranking officials from Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Malta have gathered Monday in Nicosia to draft a common paper regarding the challenges they face in the area of migration and asylum.
The paper is expected to be adopted at ministerial level, when Interior Ministers from Cyprus, Greece, Italy and Malta will gather in Rome in January.
Addressing the meeting, Cypriot Minister of the Interior Neoclis Sylikiotis said that EU Mediterranean countries are the ones who feel the strain as regards the great numbers of asylum seekers.
The Minister said that Cyprus, Greece, Malta and Italy ask for solidarity and burden sharing on behalf of the other EU member states as well as for the resettlement of refugees.
Cyprus, he added, will stress that its external frontiers on its north and northeast coasts cannot be controlled because that part of the Republic of Cyprus is occupied by Turkish troops since 1974.
Furthermore, Cyprus, Greece, Malta and Italy will ask for a more effective action on behalf of FRONTEX, the EU agency, which was created as a specialised and independent body, tasked to coordinate the operational cooperation between Member States in the field of border security.