Italy should not bear the brunt of supporting Europe's asylum seekers, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said on Monday.
Addressing a two-day conference of European Union ministers, Maroni suggested Italy's location as one of the bloc's southernmost border nations put it under particular pressure.
''Italy and other border countries cannot be the ones bearing all the burden and all the costs of those who want to come and live in Europe, not necessarily even in Italy,'' said the Italian minister.
The EU's current refugee rules, as enshrined in the Dublin Convention, require applicants to lodge their asylum claim in the first EU country they enter.
The rule was designed to prevent people making multiple asylum applications or ''shopping around'' for the state most likely to grant them refugee status.
However, this has placed considerable strain on countries at the edge of the 27-nation bloc, as they receive a far higher number of requests.
Discussing Italy's policies at the ''Building a Europe of Asylum'' conference, Maroni said his country's centre-right government had made every effort to implement a ''best practice for asylum seekers''.
But he said as a frontline EU state, Italy needed more support from the bloc as a whole. He urged ministers to agree on common rules, which he said would ease the burden currently borne by border states.
The focus of the two-day event, hosted by France in its capacity as duty president of the EU, is on pushing ahead with the bloc's common rules on asylum.
MINISTERS DISCUSSING PROPOSALS ON AMENDING DUBLIN RULES.
Ministers are discussing proposals from the European Commission to amend the Dublin rules.
As well as the pressure the current system places on border states, there has been criticism of the different levels of protection offered by various member states.
Not only does this mean states with more favourable asylum policies receive more applications, it also means some countries may be turning away applicants unfairly.
Speaking at the meeting, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres commented on the ''wide disparities'' between different EU countries.
''Protection rates for asylum-seekers [...] can range from zero to near 100%, depending on the country where the claim is examined,'' he said. ''Such wide disparities are incompatible with a common system which seeks to guarantee equal protection across the European Union''.
Guterres said this was of particular concern given that the Dublin system was based on the presumption that ''asylum systems of the Member States are comparable''. He also reminded ministers that EU efforts to build a common asylum system offered a ''unique opportunity to strengthen refugee protection'' but urged the bloc to work more closely with third countries.
Currently, 80% of the world's refugees are hosted by developing countries, and Guterres called on the EU to allow more of these individuals into the bloc under resettlement programmes.
Guterres also warned that Europe ''must be accessible for those seeking protection''.
''Yet there are more and more barriers to entry to Europe,'' he said. ''This creates a situation in which many people in search of protection have no choice but to put themselves in the hands of people-smugglers and traffickers''.
Paris has said it hopes to reach agreement on the second phase in the EU's progress towards a common asylum policy by the end of the year, with amended rules on asylum coming in to force by ''2010 or 2012 at the latest''.
