EU justice chief criticises aslyum procedures

(BRUSSELS) - The European Union's top justice official hit out Wednesday at EU nations for failing to improve asylum procedures, a day after riot police rounded up migrants at a camp in northern France.

EU Justice Commissioner Jacques Barrot said that problems posed by would-be immigrants to Britain in a zone known as "The Jungle" near Calais needed to be addressed at a European level, not band-aid measures taken by single states.

"The time for purely national responses is gone. This kind of phenomena requires a European answer, so that all the different practices can be brought into line" among the 27 nations, he told AFP.

He said his services had proposed allowing migrants to apply for asylum in any EU country where their families already live, rather than only at the point of first entry into the bloc, as is the case now.

The question was put to EU interior ministers at a meeting in Brussels on Monday, but their response had been lukewarm "and not just Britain", Barrot said.

He said the lack of solidarity was leaving countries like Malta, Greece and Italy -- where many migrants from Africa seeking a home in Europe first arrive -- with a tough burden to bear.

"It's up to the states to show more solidarity," he said. "Otherwise we will return sooner or later to the times where migrants roam, helped by traffickers, and European nations are divided, making them much weaker," he said.

French Immigration Minister Eric Besson said 276 people were detained in the two-hour raid Tuesday involving 500 officers and he hailed the operation as a key blow to smuggling networks.

Nearly half the migrants identified themselves as minors and were to be taken to shelters, he said. The adults were to be offered the chance to apply for asylum, money for a voluntary return home or a place in a shelter.