EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - Brussels is set to kick off lengthy legislative efforts which could see EU states sharing the asylum seeker burden more equally, after 182,000 people sought refuge in the 27-nation bloc last year - with gulf wide differences in terms of pressure on individual EU countries.

On Wednesday (6 June) EU home affairs commissioner Franco Frattini will table a proposal, the goal of which is "to achieve a higher common standard of protection and greater equality in protection across the EU as well as to ensure a higher degree of solidarity between EU member states."

The paper - seen by EUobserver - indicates that a more balanced distribution is needed of those who are granted protected status.

"There is a pressing need for increased solidarity...so as to ensure that responsibility for processing asylum applications and granting protection in the EU is shared equitably," Mr Frattini argues, adding "intra-EU resettlement is an important path to pursue."

The overall number of asylum applications lodged on EU territory has halved since 2002, but some countries' facilities continue to face enormous pressure.

The UK, France, Sweden and Germany each annually deal with over 20,000 requests, although Sweden is the only one where granting refugee status or other protection actually outnumbers the amount of those rejected.