EU weighs creating migrant 'return hubs' to speed up deportations скачать в хорошем качестве

EU weighs creating migrant 'return hubs' to speed up deportations

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. Home affairs ministers from the European Union's 27 member states met in Luxembourg on Thursday to discuss 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 the 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 per cent – 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. 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 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. However, more than half of the EU's member countries have said that it has not gone 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. 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. #africanmigrant, #migrantcrisis, #europeanunion(membership organization), #economic, #migrant, #eumigrant, #immigration, #african_related_content_uk, #deportation(field of study), #unitedkingdom(country), #refugeecrisis, #gs_business, #neg_facebook, #unhcrinlibya, #syrianrefugees, #neg_facebook_q4, #neg_facebook_2021, #castrol_negative_uk, #gt_negative, #neg_bucherer, #neg_facebook_neg1, #pos_equinor, #neg_mobkoi_castrol, #gv_crime, #neg_audi_list2, #syria(country), #update_news, #asylumseeker, #bbcnews, #law, #Tunisiangovernment, #imigration, #amnestyinternational,