Strasbourg, France--European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday urged EU nations to increase legal immigration in a bid to avoid more migrant deaths in the Mediterranean.
Juncker's comments angered his own centre-right party in the European Parliament, in Strasbourg, France, where he made the comments.
He expressed disappointment with the outcome of last week's emergency EU summit held in Brussels in the wake of the deadliest migrant shipwreck yet in the Mediterranean.
"We must work on legal immigration. If we close the doors, migrants will break in through the windows," Juncker told MEPs.
He won the support of the European parliament when he called for a quota for distributing asylum seekers across all 28 EU countries following the disaster, in which more than 700 migrants died on a boat crossing between Libya and southern Italy.
They overwhelmingly approved a resolution calling for a binding quota, by 449 votes to 130, with 93 abstentions.
But many member states will likely resist a measure requiring any revision of EU rules which require that the member state which first takes in an asylum seeker must then process their request on its soil and take responsibility for returning home those denied admission.
The last attempt to change the rules, in 2013, failed when 24 of the 28 EU member states voted against, with only Italy, Malta, Cyprus and Greece -- those now bearing the brunt of the migrant influx -- in favour.
However Juncker's appeal on immigration angered Manfred Weber, head of the conservative European People's Party, the largest in the European Parliament and the one Juncker belongs to.
The EPP blocked any reference to legal immigration in the parliament's draft resolution that was seen by AFP.
Juncker's proposal was also rejected by the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) as well as by the anti-EU UK Independence Party and extreme-right movements.
AFP
