by Stefania Fumo

ROME, June 20 (Xinhua) -- Italy's leaders spent World Refugee Day discussing how to curb illegal immigration in meetings held Wednesday in the nation's capital.

Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte met with European Council President Donald Tusk, while Interior Minister Matteo Salvini met with Austrian Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache and Austrian Interior Minister Herbert Kickl.

The meetings came in view of a pre-summit called by European Council chief Jean-Claude Juncker on Sunday in Brussels and ahead of a European Council summit on June 28-29, when reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) will feature prominently on the agenda.

"Today I held a very useful meeting with President Tusk," tweeted Conte. "I told him that I am not willing to discuss 'secondary movements' without first addressing the 'primary movements' emergency, which Italy has been facing on its own, at the pre-summit in Brussels."

The European Commission defines secondary movement as the movement of migrants, including refugees and asylum seekers, from the country of first arrival to another country.

Italy, Greece, and Spain have borne the brunt of the primary movements, as tens of thousands of men, women and children fleeing war and destitution in Africa and the Middle East entrust their lives to migrant traffickers to ferry them illegally across the Mediterranean.

"We believe Europe can change for the better, and that it will finally decide to protect its outer borders with respect to immigration, security and the fight against terrorism," Salvini said at a joint press conference with Strache and Kickl.

ITALY'S PROPOSAL

"We count on a change of the rules on immigration and on asylum that will be to the advantage of the few, real refugees -- and I say so on World Refugee Day," added Salvini, who leads the far-right League party and also serves as deputy prime minister of Italy.

"We are working right now on a final draft of the Italian proposal for reform of the rules on immigration, to protect the security of the Italian people and of those who embark and die in the Mediterranean," he said.

The Austrian officials echoed Salvini's sentiments.

"Our motto is a Europe that protects," said Strache, who leads Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPO).

"We must first of all reconquer the trust of the people," the vice chancellor continued. "And to do so... we must protect (Europe's) eastern and southern borders, and defeat the human traffickers who have built ever-expanding criminal networks."

For his part, the Austrian interior minister slammed the "time wasted building a false system, in which human traffickers shaped the immigration flows."

"Politicians so far have thought that their only duty was to repair the damage caused by the traffickers," said Kickl, who is also from the FPO. "Now we must move from a reactive to an active (immigration) policy."

So far this year a total of 16,133 asylum seekers have reached Italy by sea, down 77.4 percent compared with the same period in 2017, according to Interior Ministry data.

Sunday's gathering in Brussels will reportedly be attended by Austria, Bulgaria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, and Spain.

Austria will take over the rotating presidency of the EU for six months, beginning on July 1.