(AP) Ministers from European Union nations under pressure from unauthorized border crossings asked Friday for more action to protect the bloc’s external borders as well as for rules to return migrants to their homelands or where they started their journeys.
Interior ministers from EU countries including Greece, Poland, Italy, Austria and France — which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency — as well as nonaligned Switzerland and Norway attended a border security conference in Lithuania’s capital of Vilnius. European Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson and the heads of European security bodies like Europol and Frontex, the EU’s border agency, also joined the talks.
The ministers described the influx of thousands of migrants as dramatic and urged swift actions, including reinforcing the EU’s borders and cracking down on people smugglers to protect both EU citizens and the lives of migrants and refugees from the Middle East, Africa and Asia who undertake hazardous journeys to reach Europe.
