Parliament voted in favor of increased presence in North Africa and cutting the number of troops in the Middle East. Rome hopes to fight the human trafficking that has brought hundreds of thousands of migrants to Italy.
Authorities have made five arrests over a smuggling ring that illegally brought Syrians to Germany. A Syrian-Polish family allegedly made €300,000 by trafficking refugees.
Morocco will repatriate 800 migrants from Libya in three different operations.
EU Commission President Jean Claude Juncker stressed that 95 percent of migrants registered in the relocation programs had been transferred from Italy and Greece. The mechanism, he said, was working.
As many refugees that arrive in Germany are younger than the aging native population, they help keep certain medical costs down. However, this is only expected to last for a few years.