Cooperation on the readmission of irregular migrants worked fairly well in 2019 with one third of the non-Member States concerned, “on average” with another third and less well with another third of countries for which cooperation “needs to be improved”.
In general, returns continue to be a challenge for Member States. “Much remains to be done”, said the European Commission on Wednesday 10 February, in a public communication intended to contribute to the work of the Member States on the Asylum and Migration Pact and its section on returns.
In this 12-page document, the Commission reviews the elements that need to be put forward to accelerate return rates. It devotes a chapter to the new provision created by the European Visa Code, which aims to assess the rate of readmission by non-Member States of their nationals in an irregular situation.
Possible retaliatory measures on visas will depend on this assessment, as provided for in the new rules.
The EU has 18 readmission agreements and six arrangements. Negotiations are ongoing with Nigeria, Tunisia, Morocco and China; and the EU has lines on readmission in other international frameworks such as the Cotonou Agreement. However, the Commission does not specify in which category it classifies all these countries. It will discuss this with the Council of the EU.
For the rest, the communication merely recalls the actions launched by the Commission to strengthen returns, between the forthcoming appointment of an EU coordinator on returns and a strategy on voluntary returns and reintegration.
The Commission continues to believe that the key to success lies in the revision of the Returns Directive of 2018, which is still under discussion in the European Parliament.
Link to the communication: https://bit.ly/2Osdd7J (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)