IntMin Dan tells EU-Africa conference migration challenges cannot be tackled by one country alone

Romania's Interior Minister Carmen Dan said on Thursday migration challenges cannot be tackled by a single country, as the recent past has indicated, opening an EU-Africa conference on migration in Brussels. "As the minister of internal affairs of an EU member state, I can say that the instruments of each member state for co-operation with third countries on migration are quite limited compared to what we can do together with the EU. Migration challenges cannot be tackled by a single country, as the recent past has shown us," said Dan, according to a press statement released by Romania's Interior Ministry (MAI) on Thursday. The EU-Africa Conference is held on the side-lines of a Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting to discuss the migration management - an item that is also on the agenda of the JHA Council meeting that starts on Thursday and concerns both the European Union and the North African states. In addition to Minister Carmen Dan, European Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and senior representatives of the African Union also participate in the conference. In his turn, European Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said at the beginning of the conference that the EU and Africa need to be able to turn the common challenges they face into development opportunities that bring benefits to Europe as well as Africa. Both the representatives of the European Union and those of the African countries underscored the need to identify solutions that benefit citizens in Europe and Africa and to be able to control illegal migration endangering citizens of African countries. "In the Internal Affairs section of the Justice and Home Affairs Council meeting, concrete measures will be put forth to manage migration, including the adoption of a regulation on the establishment of a migration and asylum fund," the release also reads. AGERPRES (RO - author: Daniel Alexandru Florea, editor: Florin Marin; EN -author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Panaitescu)