LUXEMBOURG—European Union interior ministers began a meeting Thursday, seeking to strengthen the control of the bloc's external borders and speed up the return of migrants denied asylum.

The host of the meeting, Luxembourg's interior and foreign minister Jean Asselborn, said on his way in that the bloc's passport-free, borderless area known as Schengen "will survive only if our external borders are protected."

Several countries, notably Germany and Austria, have reintroduced border checks with their neighbors in recent months in response to Europe's largest influx of migrants and refugees in decades. But thousands of people are still pouring in and EU officials have warned that millions more are coming, particularly from Syria, Iraq and other war-torn countries.

Ministers are expected to discuss allocating more money and staff for the bloc's border agency, Frontex, which last week demanded another 755 border officers to be deployed from EU countries to Italy and Greece.

They are also looking at speedier returns of migrants who have been denied asylum, including the controversial idea of linking development aid for countries in Africa to their accepting people sent back from Europe.

"We can only help refugees if non-refugees don't come or are quickly returned," said German Interior Minister Thomas De Maiziè re on his way into the meeting. He admitted that "returns are always tough, but if we decide to separate between those entitled to international protection and those who are not, then tough measures have to be taken."

The ministers are also taking stock of where they are in terms of the EU's decision to redistribute 160,000 asylum seekers, who are already in Italy and Greece, to other countries in the bloc, after a bitter debate over the summer that ended with four central and eastern EU states—which opposed the proposal—being outvoted on Sept. 22.

"Today the meeting is going to be a bit cozier than the last one," Mr. Asselborn said, referring to the previous meeting when the vote took place. A first batch of 20 people, mostly Eritreans, will fly out of Italy to Sweden on Friday, said a spokeswoman for the European Commission, the EU executive.

In the evening, EU interior and foreign ministers will be joined by their counterparts from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, as well as the Balkan countries, in a first effort to discuss how to stem the flow of refugees and migrants mostly coming via Turkey, Greece and the Balkan states into Austria and Germany.

On the table is additional EU humanitarian aid for migrants, who now face falling temperatures with the start of autumn, as well as ways to coordinate efforts to target people-smuggling gangs. There are also proposals to place temporary reception centers in and outside the EU to better share the burden.

But with recriminations having flared up over the past few months, stoking old rivalries in the war-scarred Balkan region, the event is largely an attempt to defuse tensions.

"The refugee streams have destabilized an already fragile and difficult situation in the Western Balkans. What is important now is that we sit around a table and find some common ground, first and foremost by not criticizing each other publicly," Mr. De Maiziè re said.

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

October 08, 2015 07:45 ET (11:45 GMT)