ATHENS: Greece said Tuesday that it would push for a "European solution" to migrant arrivals on the continent, saying that "bilateral accords will lead nowhere".
"Nobody can tackle this problem alone," Greece's Immigration Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos told Skai TV, after Italy sent its first intercepted migrants to Albania -- not a EU member -- in a controversial asylum processing deal.
"This is why the prime minister [Kyriakos Mitsotakis] will also speak about... a European solution" on migration policy at an EU summit on Thursday and Friday, Panagiotopoulos said.
In a European first, Italy has signed a deal with Albania to run two migrant centres in Albania, with Italian judges hearing asylum cases by video from Rome.
The Albania centres will have a capacity of 1,000 people initially, eventually reaching 3,000.
"To put things in their context, this structure is able to handle fewer than 1,000 people," Panagiotopoulos said about the Albania site.
"So it's not about some major project while we're talking about hundreds of thousands" of migrants trying to reach Europe every year, he said.
Rights groups question if there will be sufficient protection for asylum seekers under the Italy/Albania deal, and have expressed doubts as to whether the move complies with international law.