European immigration and a row over US eavesdropping are set to dominate an EU leaders’ summit beginning in Brussels on Thursday, after a deadly shipwreck off Italy shocked the continent. The deaths of hundreds of migrants trying to reach Europe has triggered a barrage of calls for action to prevent the Mediterranean Sea from turning into what French foreign minister Laurent Fabius labelled an ‘open-air cemetery’. The summit comes weeks after Italy’s worst refugee disaster in which a boat carrying mainly Eritrean asylum-seekers caught fire, capsized and sank within sight of the coast of Lampedusa Island on 3 October, killing 364 migrants. Meanwhile a growing row over secret US electronic surveillance is also expected to be at the forefront of the talks, after reports that the US eavesdropped on German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s mobile phone calls.