Germany and the European Commission have urged European Union member states to take in migrants, with the German government set to highlight the issue at a meeting next week.
The demands for more EU member states to take in migrants comes after several migrant transport NGOs operating in the Mediterranean have again begun picking up migrants off the coast of Libya in recent weeks, Die Welt reports.
European Commission home affairs commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos has proposed a “provisional” distribution system to deal with the influx of new migrants as the Italian government, under the policies of interior minister Matteo Salvini, has refused docking of migrant transport NGO vessels at Italian ports.
German interior minister Horst Seehofer has said he will look at addressing the problem at the July 18th meeting of the Council of the European Union’s Justice and Home Affairs Ministers in Helsinki, saying he wished to “make a decisive commitment to a humanitarian and workable solution to the current challenges of migration across the Mediterranean”.