EU ministers met this week to discuss "innovative" ways to deport more undocumented migrants and rejected asylum seekers, including controversial plans to set up dedicated return centres outside the bloc.
Meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday, home affairs ministers from the European Union's 27 member states were asked whether the bloc should explore "the legal and practical feasibility of innovative solutions in the field of returns, notably the return hub concept".
Any such hubs would be designed "in full compliance with international and EU law and fundamental rights", a briefing note said.
According to official statistics agency Eurostat, more than 484,000 non-EU citizens were ordered to leave the bloc last year, of whom around 91,500 – less than 20 percent – effectively returned.
After recent far-right gains in several EU countries, a growing number of governments are eager to show voters they are speeding up deportations of migrants denied permission to stay.
"We must not rule out any solution a priori," France's new right-wing Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said as he arrived for Thursday's meeting.
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Immigration reforms
The talks came ahead of a gathering of EU leaders later this month, and only a few months after Brussels adopted a sweeping reform of its asylum policies.
In April, the European Parliament approved immigration legislation that was designed to ease the burden on member states that historically took in most migrants and asylum seekers.
The long-negotiated package, which will come into force in June 2026, hardens border procedures and requires countries to take in asylum seekers from "frontline" states such as Italy, Malta and Greece, or provide money and resources.
But more than half of the EU's member countries have said it does not go far enough.
In May, 15 of them urged the European Commission to "think outside the box", calling for the creation of centres outside the EU where rejected asylum seekers could be sent pending deportation.
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Rights concerns
A January report by the European Parliamentary Research Service notes that proponents of "extraterritorial processing" of asylum requests claim it would save lives by reducing the need for asylum seekers to embark on dangerous journeys to reach Europe.
They also argue it would stop the flow of money to migrant smuggling networks.
But critics say that countries likely to be approached to host possible processing centres, such as Tunisia, Libya or Egypt, are not suitable to do so.
In June last year, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen offered Tunisia a €900 million deal that included "helping Tunisia with border management and to combat human trafficking", and later went to Egypt to talk about similar cooperation.
But rights watchdog Amnesty International said this month that Tunisia’s "lack of an asylum system and the Tunisian government’s crackdown on civil society [and] judicial independence" mean that it is "not a safe place" for asylum seekers.
Meanwhile Human Rights Watch blasted a recent deal between the EU and Egypt regarding increased border control as "rewarding authoritarianism" and "betraying EU values".
Anti-immigration sentiment
Costly and requiring cooperation from migrants' countries of origin, repatriations are notoriously difficult.
According to border patrol agency Frontex, the top three nationalities of migrants who irregularly crossed into the EU so far this year are Syria, Mali and Afghanistan – countries with whom Brussels has limited relations.
Besides return hubs, Austria and the Netherlands have suggested legal changes to allow authorities to sanction rejected asylum applicants who are ordered to leave but fail to do so.
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EU parliamentary elections in June saw a strong performance by hard-right parties, often riding anti-immigrant sentiment, confirmed by recent national and regional votes in the Netherlands, Austria and Germany.
Meanwhile France's government tilted to the right after a snap vote this summer, and Interior Minister Retailleau is known for his hardline stance on migration.
And Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez on Wednesday called for the new EU rules on handling irregular arrivals of asylum seekers and migrants to come into force in 2025, a year ahead of schedule.
Asylum trends
According to the EU Agency for Asylum (EUAA), the EU received 1.1 million asylum applications in 2023, up by 18 percent compared to 2022.
Germany remained the top destination for asylum seekers, receiving nearly a third of all applications lodged in the EU.
The agency's report also noted that at the end of 2023, there were "more cases pending at first instance (883,000) than at any other point since 2016, amid the refugee crisis of 2015-16".
According to the EUAA's latest figures, EU countries plus Norway and Switzerland received 85,000 asylum applications in May of this year, down by a third compared to the peak reached last autumn.
Irregular border crossings fell by 39 percent to almost 140,000 in the first eight months of 2024, compared to the same period last year, according to Frontex.
(with newswires)
