EU countries conceded Tuesday they were a long way from breaking a two-year deadlock over reforming the bloc's asylum rules by a deadline this month amid a "harder political climate" following right-wing election gains in Italy.

Key European Union ministers and officials meeting in Luxembourg were lukewarm or even opposed to Bulgaria's new compromise plan on how to close an east-west rift over the reforms before a June 28-29 summit in Brussels.

"The current state of negotiations is not acceptable," Stephan Mayer, a senior German interior ministry official, told reporters as he arrived for the talks. "We are not ready to accept it [the plan]."

Mayer, whose country is Europe's top migrant destination, said Italy, its southern EU neighbors and eastern European countries also criticized at least parts of the plan.

Migration Minister Helene Fritzon of Sweden, a key migrant destination, said chances of a compromise may even be tougher following right-wing gains in elections in Italy and Slovenia.

"It is a harder climate, a harder political climate in Europe today," Fritzon told reporters.

Coming to power amid public discontent over the migration and unemployment crises, Italy's populist coalition government has denounced the draft reforms.

"Italy and Sicily cannot be Europe's refugee camp," new hardline interior minister Matteo Salvini said Sunday in Sicily's port of Pozzallo, a migrant landing point.

The reforms, he said, condemn Italy and other Mediterranean countries to continue bearing the burden of an unprecedented migration crisis for the 28-nation bloc, which peaked in 2015.

Standing in for Salvini in Luxembourg is Maurizio Massari, Italy's envoy to the EU in Brussels.

EU leaders in December set an end-of-June deadline for an overhaul of the so-called Dublin rules to create a permanent mechanism to deal with migrants in the event of a new emergency.

Under existing rules, countries where migrants first arrive are required to process asylum requests. Italy, Greece and Spain are the main entry points.

EU cooperation deals with Turkey and Libya, the main transit countries, have helped to slow, at least for now, the flow of migrants to Europe since 2015.

Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia have either refused outright or resisted taking in refugees since the Commission first pushed through temporary quotas in 2015 as a way to ease the burden on frontline states Italy and Greece.