EU leaders on Thursday agreed to seek cooperation with North African countries and strengthen the bloc's external borders to prevent large numbers of immigrants from entering Europe.
In a statement issued at the EU summit in Brussels, where leaders of member states discussed the issue of immigration, European countries stressed the need to work with countries that migrants leaving Europe or traveling through.
European leaders said working with them to "investigate, prosecute and prosecute smugglers" who take refugees and migrants on dangerous flights by land and sea must be intensified, the Associated Press reported.
More than a million migrants entered Europe in 2015, mostly Syrians and Iraqis fleeing conflict in their home countries, before immigration numbers dropped sharply after the EU signed an agreement with Turkey to stem the flow.
The European Union has offered Turkey at least 3 billion euros ($ 3.4 billion) in aid to Syrian refugees in exchange for efforts to prevent immigrants from reaching Europe. The EU wants to reproduce the model elsewhere.
One of the reasons why the EU sought external solutions was the reluctance of some Member States to accept refugee quotas or to co-host newcomers, most of whom arrived through countries in southern Europe.
Mediterranean countries such as Greece, Italy and Spain have complained recently of abandoning them to managing the flow alone.
"We can not just say that a country with borders on the sea is suddenly the only country responsible for immigrants, the problem is European and the solution must be European as well," Luxembourg Prime Minister Xavier Beetle said.
In the midst of a showdown over quotas, momentum is growing for countries to pay more money to destination countries such as Greece and Italy, for example, or development assistance to countries of origin, rather than hosting refugees.
"We recommend that we go to solidarity instead of mandatory quotas, which means that each country will make a contribution wherever possible, and where that makes sense," said Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Curtis.
"It is possible that there will be no more refugees but more money," said President of the European Parliament Antonio Tiani.
For her part, German Chancellor Angela Merkel questioned the idea of "solidarity commitments" and said: "The title looks good, but if everyone says that the commitment to solidarity I choose is solidarity to give more money to Africa, then we will not solve some problems, Alone again. "
