Lisbon, Dec. 5, 2021 (Lusa) - Eduardo Cabrita, Portugal's minister of the interior, said on Tuesday that the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) will work on a concept of "flexible compulsory solidarity" to resolve the migratory pressure on the EU bloc.

The Portuguese minister met the Greek Minister for Migration and Asylum, Notis Mitarachi, on Tuesday by videoconference to discuss the priorities of the Portuguese presidency in the area of migration.

According to a note from the Ministry of the Interior, Cabrita made it clear that Portugal would maintain an active position of sharing responsibility and solidarity in all outplacement programmes for refugees, saying that Portugal had been involved in the solutions found following the operations for migrants in the Mediterranean, as well as on the Greek islands.

The minister of the interior said the New Pact on Migration and Asylum will be a real test of Europe's capacity to generate consensus, and he said that the Portuguese presidency will work on a concept of "flexible compulsory solidarity", defining the criteria and ways in which this concept can be put into practice together with the Member States.

Cabrita hopes to find points of convergence among member states in order to overcome the aspects that generate less consensus in the New Pact for Migration and Asylum, presented by the European Commission last September and whose negotiation will now fall to the Portuguese presidency of the EU.

Cabrita, therefore, intends to meet until the 28th, the ministers of the southern European countries who have suffered most from migratory pressure in recent years, when an informal Council of Internal Affairs Ministers is scheduled under the Portuguese Presidency of the Council of the EU.

In addition to Greece, Cabrita intends to hold talks with representatives of Spain, Italy and Malta, as well as Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, countries which make up the so-called Visegrad Group.

However, Cabrita pointed out that migration was not exclusive to Greece, Italy, Malta or Spain, and considered that this situation required a European response based on solidarity, which could not be voluntary.

The internal affairs minister proposed to Notis Mitarachique that the EU should seek different solutions to the two different phenomena facing Europe today, regular flow management and crisis situations.

The solutions found should prevent people from seeking better living conditions in Europe from staying for long periods in places like Lampedusa, Samos or Lesbos without any ideas about their future.

Over the next six months of its presidency, Portugal intends to work on controlling the EU's external border, which means concerted collective efforts to strengthen human, financial and technological resources.

The EU should deepen its relationship with North African and Mediterranean countries - from Morocco to Turkey - in a comprehensive approach combining border control and returns with the establishment of legal migration mechanisms and development support, the note stated.

During the meeting between the two ministers, the importance of promoting legal migration was also underlined, as a response to the demographic problem currently facing several European countries.

Portugal took over its fourth presidency of the Council of the EU on 1 January, which will run for the first half of 2021, succeeding Germany and preceding Slovenia, under the slogan "Time to act: for a fair, green and digital recovery".

BYC/ADB // ADB.

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