The European Commission is looking into options to change its immigration rules to address a rise in the number of illegal migrants entering the EU, Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos has said. “It is now widely acknowledged that something has to change,” Avramopoulos said after talks in Athens with Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday. “We will be submitting a comprehensive proposal” in order to handle the immigrants coming from armed conflict zones in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. With its extended coastline in the Mediterranean Greece has become one of the key entry points for thousands of migrants fleeing wars in Syria, Afghanistan and North Africa. For that reason Athens has long long called for a revision of the regulation, under which the first EU country that migrants enter has to take care of their asylum applications. Tsipras said that the EU should look with great attention at the “redistribution of asylum claimants and economic refugees inside the EU,” according to AFP. His left-wing Syriza party, which came to power in January, has pledged to reform Greece’s immigration practices,starting by closing down detention facilities for refugees due to numerous complaints of overcrowding and police abuse there. The EU needs to show more solidarity toward people fleeing war zones, Tsipras said after the meeting with Avramopoulos. He also called for increased support for countries on Europe's external borders, such as Greece, who receive the majority of immigrants. "Greece cannot be a soul repository; the problem needs to be shared," Tsipras said, according to Greek newspaper Kathimerini. Greek and European authorities announced last month that a people-trafficking ring bringing mainly Syrian irregular migrants to Greece via Turkey had been uncovered with the support of Europol. Based on their investigation, police believe the criminal organization was also involved in the trafficking of migrants to other EU member-states via Greece.
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