"There is an agreement... that will be presented to the Council of Ministers of home affairs on October 8" in Luxembourg, Maltese Interior Minister Michael Farrugia told journalists after talks with his French, German and Italian counterparts.
"No country should be left alone under stress," Farrugia said of efforts to create an automatic distribution scheme until the current system, the "Dublin regulation", can be revised.
Critics have long argued that the regulation places an unfair burden on the Mediterranean frontier countries Italy, Malta, Greece and Spain.
Italy's new, pro-EU government has moved quickly to turn the page on the hardline anti-migrant policies pursued by former far-right interior minister Matteo Salvini, who closed the ports to those rescued.
A successful European migrant agreement would be a blow to Salvini, showing that cooperation gets better results than confrontation.
French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner said that details of the plan would not immediately be made public.
"The document won't be released immediately... because we prefer to share it with other member states first," Castaner told AFP.
After a meeting last week, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and French President Emmanuel Macron both called for a reform of Europe's "ineffective" policy.
Countries that did not volunteer to take migrants should face financial penalties, they argued. "Europe has to be better prepared and stand with frontline countries like Italy, Greece, Malta, Spain and Cyprus," European migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos said as he arrived for the Malta talks.