Mediterranean European Leaders Hold Migration Talks

Leaders of the nine Mediterranean EU member states, including French President Emmanuel Macron and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, are meeting in Malta on Friday to discuss migration. This comes a day after the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees announced that more than 2,500 migrants have died or gone missing while attempting to cross the Mediterranean to Europe since the beginning of the year, a number significantly higher than the same period in 2022. The summit also arrives at a time when EU interior ministers recently made progress on new rules regarding the bloc's handling of asylum seekers and irregular migrants, with expectations of reaching an agreement in the coming days.