EU’s Mediterranean, southern European leaders meet in Malta on migration

The summit comes after the UN says more than 2,500 people had perished or disappeared crossing the Mediterranean Sea so far this year.

A group of 61 migrants on a wooden boat are rescued by crew members of the Geo Barents migrant rescue ship, operated by Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), in international waters off the coast of Libya in the central Mediterranean Sea

The leaders of nine Mediterranean and southern European countries, including France’s Emmanuel Macron and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, have met in Malta for talks focusing on migration.

The summit comes on Friday, a day after the UN refugee organisation said more than 2,500 migrants had perished or disappeared attempting to cross the Mediterranean so far this year – substantially more than at the same point in 2022.

But it also comes as EU interior ministers finally made headway on Thursday on new rules for how the bloc handles asylum seekers and irregular migrants, with a deal expected in the coming days.

Long in the works, there was new impetus to reach a deal after a sharp rise in asylum seekers landing on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa earlier this month.

Meloni’s far-right coalition government, elected on an anti-migration ticket, has clashed with both France and Germany as she presses other EU countries to share the burden. So far this year, the number of arrivals at Lampedusa has already passed 133,000.

But Meloni and Macron have sought to ease tensions in recent days and met on Tuesday in Rome on the sidelines of the state funeral for ex-Italian President Giorgio Napolitano.

“There is a shared vision of the management of the migration question between France and Italy,” a French presidential source said.

‘Clear message’
Paris is hoping Friday’s so-called Med9 summit, attended by the leaders of Malta, France, Greece, Italy, Croatia, Cyprus, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain, will offer a “clear message” that migration requires a response at the European level, the source said.