BRUSSELS: The leaders of France and Germany said on Sunday they were prepared to side-step anti-migrant EU members and do deals with individual countries on how to respond to a migrant influx that has caused deep splits in the bloc.

The talks among 16 of the European Union’s 28 leaders began after Italy’s new populist government turned away another ship packed with migrants.

The meeting, which began amid a flurry of mutual fingerpointing by France and Italy, is seen as crucial for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who faces her own political crisis at home.

“The European Council will not yet provide an overall solution to the migration problem,” Merkel said conceding a lack of consensus among EU members. “That is why it is also about bilateral or trilateral agreements for mutual benefit,” she added.

Officials warn that a new surge of migrants could trigger the collapse of free travel within the EU, its signature achievement.

Sunday’s meeting was aimed at clearing the air before a full EU summit on Thursday and Friday.

But several countries with anti-migrant governments, including Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, did not attend.

French President Emmanuel Macron urged his counterparts to take advantage of the sharp drop in migrant arrivals since a 2015 peak — Europe’s worst such crisis since World War II — to find solutions.

Echoing ally Merkel, he urged a European solution, “whether that is cooperation among 28 or among several countries that decide to move forward together.” At stake, Macron warned, was Europe’s values of human rights and solidarity.

But he has angered the new government of Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte who accuses him of playing down the scale of the problem in Italy, the main European landing point for African migrants.

“The immigration emergency continues in Italy, partly because France keeps pushing back people at the border,” Italian deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maio shot back on his Facebook page, warning Macron risked turning France into “Italy’s number one enemy” on the issue.

Macron said France would “take lessons from no-one” and that the main problem was the movement of migrants across EU borders.

He has called for the establishment of closed centres to keep asylum seekers in countries of arrival until their claims are processed — a proposal that Italy furiously rejected, saying it did not want to be turned into “a refugee camp for all of Europe.” Under the EU’s so-called Dublin rules, asylum-seekers must be processed in the country where they first arrive, usually Mediterranean countries such as Italy, Greece and Spain.

In a counter-proposal, Italy on Sunday called for migrant “protection centres” to be set up in several EU countries to relieve overcrowding in its facilities and also demanded more aid for African countries that fight human trafficking.

Published in Dawn, June 25th, 2018