Children were among the victims, and it was the second migrant boat to sink in as many days. Seven people drowned off the island of Kos on Wednesday.

Two hundred people have drowned trying to get to Greece this month. The EU is anxious to stop the influx from Turkey.

The nationalities of the latest migrant victims are not yet known. Most of those who risk their lives crossing to Greek islands, packed aboard rickety boats, are refugees from the conflicts in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The EU`s Frontex border agency is helping the search for survivors off Samos.

Migrants and refugees arriving on the Greek islands would immediately be sent back by ferry to Turkey, under a Dutch plan aimed at solving the crisis.

Under the proposal, Labour party leader Diederik Samsom says that in return the EU would offer to take in up to 250,000 refugees a year currently in Turkey. The European Union said it was unaware of the plan, adding that it did not "push back" asylum seekers.

More than 850,000 people arrived on the Greek islands from Turkey last year.

The plan would need to be in place by spring, before the next surge in numbers is expected, he says. Already some 46,000 have reached Greece in January.

On Wednesday, a draft European Commission report said Greece had "seriously neglected" its obligations to control the external frontier of Europe`s passport-free Schengen zone. But Greek government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili accused the Commission of "blame games".

The Dutch proposal "to force a solution" to the migrant crisis came as the Swedish authorities said as many as 80,000 people who arrived there last year could fail in their requests for asylum and face deportation.

Swedish Interior Minister Anders Ygeman said charter aircraft would be used to deport the migrants but it would take several years.

Mikael Ribbenvik, head of operations at the Swedish Migration Agency, told the BBC that assessing all the asylum applications would be a huge task, requiring more government resources.

"A lot of people leave voluntarily and a lot of people abscond. And then we have a few people staying on who are impossible to remove because of identification purposes," he said.

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