EU member states’ interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg today (11 April) rejected a plea by Italy for help in dealing with more than 20,000 Tunisians who have reached its shores – primarily on the island of Lampedusa – over the past few months.

The ministers agreed, by contrast, to the voluntary resettlement of around 1,000 people who landed on Malta. Most of them are Eritreans and Somalis who fled the violence in Libya and who cannot be returned to their home countries.

Cecilia Malmström, the European commissioner for home affairs, said today that Belgium, Germany, Norway, Portugal, Spain and Sweden had agreed to take in some of the Africans fleeing Libya. “We’re urging the member states to show solidarity,” she said.

Malmström also said that there was a “very strong majority” view, shared by the Commission, that it would be “premature” to activate an EU-wide mechanism to grant temporary protection to the migrants, as demanded by Malta.

Italy’s decision to grant temporary residence to the Tunisians, who for the most part are economic migrants rather than persons in need of international protection, has incensed other members of the EU’s Schengen area. France has begun detaining and returning Tunisians to Italy, while Germany and Austria have threatened to re-impose border checks, which have been abolished under the Schengen agreement.

Tunisia has agreed to take back 60 migrants a day, up from the current figure of around four. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, will visit Tunisia tomorrow (12 April) for talks on readmission. National interior ministers are to discuss additional steps at an extraordinary meeting on 12 May.