Former Romanian President Traian Băsescu, newly elected as an MEP as part of the European People's Party, slammed EU inaction on migration | John Thys/AFP via Getty Images Former Romanian president, now MEP: ‘EU seems to tell us we must live with Muslim invasion’ Tough action is needed to combat the criminal gangs running migrant operations, says Traian Băsescu.

Former Romanian President Traian Băsescu, newly elected as an MEP as part of the European People's Party, slammed EU inaction on migration and what he sees as the bloc's inability to protect its borders.

"The EU, through its lack of action, seems to tell us that we must live with the Muslim invasion," Băsescu said in a TV interview this week.

Băsescu, a former commercial navy ship captain, served as Romania's president between 2004 and 2014, and was in office when the country joined the EU in January 2007. As one of the two MEPs from Romania's center-right People's Movement Party, Băsescu said the migration issue was one of the battles he planned to fight in Brussels.

"Don't think that the 2015 crisis is over," he said. "It is in full swing even now. But there's no more talk about it because it's become almost a given," he said.

EU and international data have shown a decline in migrant arrivals in the bloc since they peaked in 2015, when more than a million people entered the EU. Arrivals so far this year total around 31,000, according to the International Organization on Migration. There were 145,000 arrivals last year.

Băsescu said military fleets should be used in the Mediterranean to push back migrants while they are still in the territorial waters of the countries they set off from. This is the only way to stop them and put them back in a legal situation, since they're trying to enter the EU illegally, he argued. "Any state defends its border," he said.

The EU has to do that to fight not the "poor migrants," but the criminal organizations that charge them some €5,000 to €10,000 to place them in Italy, Spain and Greece.

These "things are so well known that it seems very wrong to me that the EU does not put its resources together and stop" this, Băsescu said.