The European Union (EU) will put in place 15 measures to help Spain cope with the wave of African migrants who have been arriving in the Canary Islands, a Spanish territory off the coast of Africa, an EU official said on Tuesday.

Franco Frattini, the European Commission (EC)'s vice-president for justice and domestic affairs, said the EU's border control agency will send naval and aerial patrols along the coasts of Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal and Cape Verde, homelands to most of the immigrants.

The EC was working on 15 more measures to help Spain monitor its coasts, Frattini said after meeting with Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega, Spain's deputy prime minister.

"There is a quick response, which allows us to work together closely, and put in place on an empirical basis, some of the measures on which we had already been working," he said.

The EC is even prepared to pay for the repatriation of the immigrants, he said, adding that he put forward a proposal to the European External Borders Fund, calling on the EU to pay for the technology that Spain needs.

The EU move is a response to last Friday's call from Spain. Some 7,000 sub-Saharan Africans have arrived on the Spanish coast in the year to date, up from 4,715 in 2005.

Source: Xinhua