UK calls for emergency EU meeting on migrants

British Home Secretary Theresa May called on the European Union Sunday to take urgent steps to face the migrants' crisis.

In a statement, May called on the EU to hold an emergency ministerial meeting within two weeks to plan for facing such a crisis.

May and her French and German counterparts agreed during their recent meeting pm the necessity to take all data of migrants, including their fingerprints, before the end of the year, according to the joint statement.

Earlier, May blamed Europe’s "system of no borders" for soaring net migration to Britain and the crisis gripping the continent.

Figures last week showed 330,000 more people came to the UK in the year to March. The figures shattered earlier pledge by Prime Minister David Cameron to cut net migration to below 100,000 a year.

 At least 2,500 migrants have died since January, most of them drowning in the Mediterranean after arduous journeys fleeing war, oppression or poverty in Syria and other parts of the Middle East and Africa or beyond.

The horrors faced by migrants were brought to the heart of the European mainland on Friday when 71 bodies, including those of a baby girl and three other children were found in an abandoned refrigeration truck in Austria.

• This migration crisis could test the European project to destruction

The dead, believed to be refugees from Syria or possibly Afghanistan, had been packed into the truck with just 1 square metre (10 sq ft) of space per five people, police said on Sunday, as initial forensic tests indicated they had suffocated.

Hungarian police arrested a fifth suspect, a Bulgarian citizen, in connection with the deaths. Three Bulgarians and one Afghan had already been arrested.
Source: MENA