Around 6,800 migrants were rescued from overcrowded boats crossing to Europe over the weekend, including a mother who gave birth to a baby girl on an Italian navy ship, the coast guard said.

Numbers risking the journey in search of a better life have continued to rise two weeks after as many as 900 people drowned in the worst Mediterranean shipwreck in living memory.

Crew from the Italian naval vessel Bettica found the woman in labor on a boat overnight -- one of 34 vessels intercepted over the weekend. A photo posted online showed her new daughter sleeping in a makeshift cradle decorated with a pink bow.

“Both mother and daughter are in good health,” the navy said in a statement.

Growing lawlessness and anarchy in Libya -- the last point on one of the main transit routes to Europe -- is giving free hand to people smugglers who make an average of 80,000 euros ($90,000) from each boatload, according to an ongoing investigation by an Italian court.

Mild spring weather and calm summer seas are expected to push total arrivals in Italy for 2015 to 200,000, an increase of 30,000 on last year, according to an Interior Ministry projection.

Police said officers rescued 21 immigrants in a boat off the southern coast of Spain on Monday.

On Sunday, seven bodies were found on two large rubber boats packed with migrants and three others died after jumping into the water when they saw a merchant ship approaching, the Italian coast guard said.

Many migrants who have made the sea crossing this year have been Eritreans, Somalis, Afghanis, Syrians and Nigerians, according to the UN refugee agency. Few details were available regarding the nationalities of those rescued over the weekend.

About 1,800 are estimated to have perished during the crossing already this year, the UN refugee agency said. Some 51,000 have entered Europe by sea, with 30,500 coming via Italy.

Shocked by last month's record disaster, European Union leaders agreed to triple funding for the EU sea patrol mission Triton, but there is still disagreement on what to do with the people fleeing conflict and poverty in various parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Italy has coordinated the rescues by its own navy and coast guard, a French ship acting on behalf of the European border control agency, merchant ships of various nationalities and one vessel run by the privately funded Migrant Offshore Aid Station.

‘Refugee quota for each EU member'

Meanwhile, Austria wants a refugee quota for every country in the European Union to help absorb hundreds of migrants arriving every day by boat in southern Europe, Chancellor Werner Faymann said in a newspaper interview.

Faymann described as “totally absurd” the current system in which refugees are supposed to be taken in by the country where they first arrive. This would mean Malta, Italy and Greece would have to accommodate all the Mediterranean refugees, which they are unable to, he said.

“I want quick EU-wide rules that in future all 28 countries declare themselves willing to take in refugees on a scale linked to population. There should be a refugee quota for each country,” he told Oesterreich in an interview printed on Sunday.

“This naturally applies only to refugees fleeing war and seeking political asylum. We do not want and cannot take in economic refugees,” he added.

His office confirmed the quotes were accurate.

Shocked into action by a shipwreck in the Mediterranean last month that killed up to 900 people, the EU has pledged to triple the budget of a sea rescue mission which replaced a more comprehensive Italian operation.

Faymann, a Social Democrat who governs in a coalition with conservatives, said even the increased rescue budget would probably have to be doubled to keep more refugees from drowning in rickety craft trying to make their way to Europe.

Faymann reiterated Austria's call for new intake centers under the auspices of the UN refugee agency that could distribute people to EU countries, but acknowledged northern African countries had little appetite to host such centers.

Asylum applications in Austria -- mostly by people from Syria, Kosovo and Afghanistan -- rose by a factor of 2.5 in the first quarter to over 10,200, government data show.

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