France, Germany demand changes to EU migrant redistribution plan

France and Germany raised concerns on Monday over a European Commission plan to redistribute migrants reaching Italy and Greece, saying it must take better account of efforts they have already taken to receive asylum seekers.

The European Commission proposed last week to relocate 40,000 Syrian and Eritrean migrants reaching Italy and Greece to other European Union member countries, with Germany and France in line to take nearly 40 percent of the migrants between them.

The interior ministers of France and Germany said in a joint statement they were ready to study the commission's proposal, as long as it was based on a fair distribution of migrants.

"This temporary relocalization mechanism must be founded on two principles of equal importance: responsibility and solidarity. We believe that the balance between these two principles has not yet been reached in the proposal presented by the commission," they said.

They said that front-line countries like Italy and Greece can only expect solidarity from their partners if they "take all the legal and financial measures needed" to beef up the EU's borders to the outside world.

Italy and Greece have been accused by some EU countries of failing to properly screen newly arrived migrants, instead simply allowing them to move farther north into Europe.

The distribution plan is based on a formula that takes into account a country’s GDP, unemployment figures, population and past number of asylum seekers.

In 2014, France, Germany, Sweden and Italy received 72 percent of asylum seekers. In addition, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees can request non-EU nationals be transferred from outside the bloc to be resettled in a member state.

The commission will also propose a permanent refugee-relocation system at the end of this year for use during high migration flows. The two ministers insisted that it should "remain temporary and exceptional."

Reacting to their statement, EU migration spokeswoman Natasha Bertaud said that the commission is "of course ready to discuss the details" of its plans with the 28 member states.

Monday sees the start of a two-day meeting in eastern Germany between the ministers and their counterparts from Italy, Poland, Spain and Britain, as well as senior U.S. and EU officials.

The commission's refugee proposals must be endorsed by member nations and the European Parliament at a vote expected this summer.

Meanwhile, the EU's Frontex border agency said on Sunday that more than 5,000 migrants aboard 25 boats arriving from Libya were plucked from the central Mediterranean in three days. Seventeen bodies were recovered.

"This is the biggest wave of migrants we have seen in 2015," Frontex Executive Director Fabrice Leggeri said.

More than 36,000 migrants have arrived in Italy since January. The International Organization for Migration estimates that 1,820 people have died or gone missing crossing the Mediterranean this year. In 2014, about 3,000 migrants and refugees are estimated to have died at sea — more than four times as many as in 2013.

Al Jazeera and wire services