Stockholm  - For 50 years, the European Union's basic rule has been that member states should help one another when they are in trouble.

That rule is now under increasing strain, as members struggle to deal with the tide of illegal migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea.

"The time has come when we have to have more solidarity from other member states. We are the first stop for refugees, and Cyprus has big problems with that," Cyprus' interior minister, Neoklis Sylikiotis, said at an informal meeting with EU counterparts in Stockholm.

Under current rules, asylum seekers have to be dealt with by the first EU country they enter. That is because immigration is a sensitive issue in many EU states, making politicians reluctant to even suggest taking in more migrants from other members.

But the situation means that just a handful of EU states are having to deal with the great majority of the bloc's migrants.

"Some member states are facing a heavier burden than others, and it's not fair that just four or five countries should carry the main load," Austria's interior minister, Maria Theresia Fekter, said.

Malta, for example, with a population of just 400,000, was home to more than 4,000 asylum seekers at the end of 2008, according to the UN's refugee agency, UNHCR.

Cyprus, with double Malta's population, had just half its number of asylum seekers.

And Estonia, whose population is roughly that of Cyprus and Malta combined, had just 22 asylum seekers on its territory.

That has led to calls from front-line Mediterranean states for better "burden-sharing" - EU code for other states to adopt some of the migrants.

Burden-sharing has to be a key part of the five-year Stockholm Programme of justice cooperation, which EU states are currently drawing up, and which should be approved by the end of the year, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni said.

"We must avoid a situation in which the front-line countries have to shoulder the whole burden alone," Sylikiotis said.

But despite calling for "voluntary solidarity" at a summit in June, member states further away from the migrant flows are reluctant to accept the challenge, warning that any move to shift migrants into Northern Europe could simply attract more migrants to the South.

"You can't write the rules in such a way that they attract even more people to come," Fekter warned.

While ministers have six months to decide on the Stockholm programme, and another five years to put it into action, time is not on their side.

Greece and Italy have already indicated that their patience is running out, bulldozing camps and sending would-be asylum seekers back to Africa without checking their claims, despite warnings from other EU countries.

"Member states have to live up to their responsibilities, they have to provide a fair and just procedure which follows the rules for everyone," said Sweden's migration minister, Tobias Billstrom.

Billstrom has more than an academic interest in the burden-sharing issue: Sweden was the top destination for Iraqi asylum seekers in 2007, with close on 11,000 applicants by the end of the year, more than all those in the rest of the EU put together.

And as the migrants keep coming into Europe, even those countries which are far away from the current front line are aware that it may not be long before they, too, are targeted.

That, in turn, raises the possibility that they may put their talk of solidarity into words sooner rather than later - in case they are next.

"When we build a common European asylum system, we cannot do it just because we have a situation right now, we have to do it on a long-term basis. In 2007 it was Sweden: what will be the country next time?" Billstrom asked. (dpa)