VIENNA, January 13, 2006 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Seeking to reduce the number of refugees trying to enter the European Union, EU ministers moved Friday, January 13, to harmonize asylum laws and pledged to strengthen cooperation on deporting illegal immigrants.

The justice and interior ministers, meeting informally for two days in Vienna, studied forward-looking ways to discourage would-be immigrants and asylum seekers from leaving their home countries, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

But they refused to back away from more controversial and repressive measures in use like the forced repatriation of illegal immigrants on charter flights.

The ministers also backed during talks in Vienna proposals to create "rapid intervention teams" including interpreters and medics to help member states cope with sudden influxes of immigrants or asylum-seekers to their shores.

A European Commission official said, according to Reuters, that he hoped the teams would be in place before the summer months, when calmer waters in the Mediterranean tempt hundreds of migrants from north Africa to head across the sea to Europe in frequently overladen boats.

EU Justice and Security Commissioner Franco Frattini told ministers he would propose by the end of the month a list of "safe countries" from which asylum requests into the 25-state bloc would in a first assessment be seen as unjustified.

The list would be drawn up based on criteria such as a country's respect for human rights and the rule of law, according to AFP.

Almost 30,000 people tried to illegally enter Italy and Spain alone in 2005.

Frattini said the lack of common standards had sparked "asylum shopping". (Reuters).

The ministers are primarily seeking to correct one of the flaws in the current system; that is the vast differences between the bloc's 25 member states on who deserves to be granted refugee status.

According to the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), Austria, hosting the talks as the current EU president, recognized more than 50 percent of asylum seekers as refugees in 2004 compared to only 0.3 percent in Greece.

"It is absurd and counter-productive if asylum seekers can get a different answer depending on what country of the Union they are in," French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy told his counterparts, according to AFP.

"It's not only illogical, this difference can create migratory movements between our countries."

"One refusal to accept a refugee has to be accepted by all countries. The precondition for this is agreement on a list of safe countries," Sarkozy told reporters at the talks, according to Reuters.

Frattini, on his part, said the lack of common standards had sparked "asylum shopping, due to the huge differences in member states, and we should absolutely overcome this situation."

Europe's immigration struggle was highlighted in September when African immigrants tried to break into the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla on the north coast of Morocco in hope of a better life across the Mediterranean.

Fourteen people were killed -- 11 of them shot dead -- and Spain was deeply embarrassed when Morocco clumsily tried to dispose of the problem by bussing hundreds of would-be immigrants into the desert.

Scores of immigrants have drowned attempting to cross the Strait of Gibraltar in rubber dinghies, decrepit boats, rafts and rubber tubes.

The rush came after Madrid announced last spring that it planned to regularize the status of some 600,000 illegal immigrants, sparking a storm of protest from Germany, the Netherlands and France.

Italy had tried a similar exercise in 2002.

EU leaders pledged later not to leave Algeria, Morocco, Libya and Tunisia to shoulder alone the policing of Europe's southwest flank and acknowledged that African development is the only way to deal with immigration long-term.

But over the last year, the measures have tended to be more draconian than forward thinking, and Frattini encouraged member states to organize repatriation flights together.

The so-called G5 states -- France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Britain -- have already done so, sending home clandestine immigrants not just from Africa, but also from eastern Europe, Afghanistan and Iraq.

"If we want to credibly react against illegality we should elaborate a true European return and repatriation policy for illegal people," Frattini said.

Sarkozy said that France and Britain were working together to send volunteer Iraqi Kurd refugees back to their region, which is relatively safe by strife-torn Iraq's standards.