Interior Minister: Urgent need for EU action plan on migration in East Med

Interior Minister Konstantinos Ioannou has stressed the need for the creation of an Action Plan on migration for the Eastern Mediterranean, similar to those for the Central Mediterranean and Western Balkans, without further delay. He was addressing the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council in Brussels.

The Ministers exchanged views on the external dimension of migration, as well as on the internal management of migration flows. In particular, they discussed the implementation of the Dublin roadmap and the effective EU engagement at the external borders, including on the matter of operations by private entities.

According to a press release by the Interior Ministry, during his intervention, Ioannou "highlighted the dramatic situation in Cyprus, indicating that the country's potential for managing the problem has been exhausted. He reiterated that the measures taken should respond to the real pressures that Cyprus is facing as a front-line country, which are disproportionately greater than any other Member State of the Union".

In this context, he stressed that there is a need to immediately advance the preparation of a specific Action Plan for the Eastern Mediterranean. This plan would include concrete measures which "will have added value and will ensure immediate tangible results in terms of reducing flows, taking into account the specificities of the region and the destabilising role of Turkey", he said.

Ioannou stressed that the problem "is an undeniable result of Turkey's instrumentalisation and targeted promotion of irregular migrants to the free areas", adding that specific initiatives should be developed “to curb the action of traffickers and various other actors, such as for example air carriers, who by their actions or through their tolerance contribute to the existing situation".

The Interior Minister also called on Member States "to listen to the concerns of Cyprus and to walk with it on a common path of substantial solidarity, which cannot be achieved without a mandatory relocation framework that ensures a fair distribution of the migratory burden among EU Member States".

Only in this way, he added, can there be "tangible results that bring real relief to Cyprus and the other Member States".

Ioannou also met on the margins of the Council with the Vice-President of the European Commission, Margaritis Schinas, the head of the European Asylum Support Office, Nina Gregory, and the Deputy Director General of the Commission for Migration and Home Affairs, Beate Gminder, with whom he discussed "issues related to strengthening Cyprus' efforts to manage the problem and to support the institutions in their demands for practical solidarity".