Brussels has accused EU member states of offering a “measly” level of funding for efforts in north Africa to halt the migration crisis. The European commissioner for migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, said the €200m produced so far was too little. “The member states need to get serious on this,” he said.

On Wednesday the European court of justice backed attempts by Austria and Slovenia to deport asylum seekers back to their point of entry in the EU. The court ruled that a law requiring refugees to seek asylum in the first country they reach applied even in exceptional circumstances. The case could affect the future of several hundred people who arrived in 2015-16. But Avramopoulos said he was pleased by an increase in the number of refugees relocated from Italian and Greek camps to other states, and a sense of growing solidarity within the bloc. A record number of refugees were transferred in June, and the total number of relocations under an initiative agreed in 2015 now stands at 24,676 – 16,803 from Greece and 7,873 from Italy – with “almost all member states pledging and transferring regularly”, the commission said.(theguardian)…[+]