UN AGENCY: MIGRANT CENTERS NOT SILVER BULLETS

BRUSSELS— Planned new centers for refugees around the Mediterranean to handle migrants would be no silver bullet solution to the European Union’s immigration challenge, said the International Organization for Migration (IOM).

Survivors

Irregular migration across the sea has been dramatically reduced, and only about 45,000 people have made it to Europe that way this year.

Last week, EU states had agreed to tighten their external borders and spend more in the Middle East and North Africa to bring down the number of arrivals.

EU leaders had agreed to set up “disembarkation platforms” to handle those rescued from the dangerous crossing. Most are brought ashore in Italy, but more than 1,300 people perished this year.

“The Mediterranean is a shared space, north-south. We have a joint responsibility to govern what happens in that space, including avoiding that people drown,” Eugenio Ambrosi, the head of the IOM’s EU mission, told Reuters.

The IOM and its sister UN agency High Commission for Refugees are supposed to assist in running the new sites.

Existing centers

Ambrosi said 10 existing migrant centers in Greece and Italy could first be beefed up and new ones could then be added in Malta.

“Before going outside of Europe, asking other countries to help, we have to make sure that enough European countries help each other,” Ambrosi said in an interview.