Mediterranean crisis resolution "not very ambitious," says PACE president

Anne Brasseur, president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), on Friday said its Mediterranean crisis resolution was "not very ambitious."

The resolution was adopted on Thursday as part of the 2015 spring session of PACE.

It called for "urgent and concerted action" by the EU to enhance co-operation in dealing with the migrant crisis, and to provide coordinated assistance to search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea. It also asks EU member states to provide more legal options for migration and asylum seekers.

Brasseur, however, said more needed to be done in national parliaments to deal with the humanitarian crisis, and to share the burden with the countries facing the heaviest influxes.

"We cannot leave the countries of the south alone," she said, referring to countries receiving the highest numbers of migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, such as Italy, Greece, Malta and Spain.

Brasseur announced a special PACE committee which will visit the Turkish border with Syria in June in order to observe the refugee crisis first hand.

The new committee will be made up of the PACE presidential committee, the president of the PACE committee on migrants, refugees and displaced persons, as well as the leaders of the national delegations to PACE or their representatives.

It will visit refugee camps and cities where refugees outnumber permanent residents, prior to the next PACE plenary session scheduled for June 22 to 26.

"The goal is to have parliamentarians there to see what is happening, so that then they can go back home and have an influence on national politics," Brasseur said. Endit