Finding ways to avoid further tragedies like that off the coast of Lampedusa on 3 October is a challenge not only for Italy but for the whole EU, MEPs stressed in a debate with Commissioner Cecilia Malmström and Lithuania's Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Vytautas Leškevi?ius on Wednesday. MEPs called for a common policy for legal migration, solidarity with member states most exposed to migratory flows and work on the roots of the problem with the migrants' countries of origin.

Frontex tools for detecting small ships setting out to cross the Mediterranean, the need for political support and resources and more cooperation with third countries (both of origin and transit) were among the issues highlighted in the debate. Solidarity must be a matter not just of words, but action too, MEPs stressed.

An estimated 25,000 migrants have drowned in the last twenty years trying to cross the Mediterrenean©Belga/Zumapress/F.Malavolta