EU interior ministers today were consideringplans to ease pressure on Italy, grappling with a rising wave of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from North Africa.
Ministers from across the bloc gathered in the Estonian capital Tallinn after Italy, which has accepted around 85,000 of the 100,000 people who have arrived this year, appealed desperately for help.
The influx has revived fears of a return to the European Union's migrant crisis of 2015, when hundreds of thousands of people flooded into the continent in search of a better life.
On the table is a European Commission plan which earmarks 35 million euros in aid for Rome as well as proposals for working with Libya and other countries to stem the flow of migrants at source.
Most of those landing in Italy are sub-Saharan Africans who have crossed by sea from Libya, a journey that has so far claimed more than 2,200 lives this year, UN figures show.
The influx has exacerbated tensions between Italy and neighbouring Austria, which this week threatened to send troops to the border to stop migrants entering.
"This meeting today will be very ambitious, even if it is informal," said Estonian Interior Minister Andres Anvelt, whose country has just taken over the rotating presidency of the European Union.
"We will discuss and work towards a solution and an action plan for Italy."
Meanwhile in Rome, top diplomats from the EU and Africa were gathering with officials from the United Nations and the International Organization for Migration (IOM) for parallel talks on ways to alleviate the ongoing crisis in the Mediterranean.
Foreign ministers from Libya, Niger, Tunisia, Egypt, Chad, Ethiopia and Sudan were meeting with their counterparts from Germany, Austria, Spain, France, The Netherlands, Malta and Estonia, with the group expected to ink a joint declaration on proposals focused on security and solidarity.
"The meetings this week (in Rome and Tallinn) should put us in a position to come up with a list of European responses," said French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian after talks with his Italian counterpart Angelino Alfano ahead of the meeting.
"Our action must focus first and foremost on Libya," he said. "The priority must be finding a solution to the crisis in this key country, one which can be reached on a pragmatic basis."
With the countries south of Libya, "our approach must be to provide an incentive (through aid and investment). We must, by necessity, demonstrate great firmness, above all in stressing the link between the policy of issuing visas and the policy of return.
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