Invited to give their views on how to strengthen Europe’s policy on the return of irregular migrants in the EU, and to feed into the discussions of European leaders at the European Summit on 17 and 18 October, a number of interior ministers from EU countries agreed in Luxembourg on Thursday 10 October on the need to revise the current directive dating from 2008. They were also open to discussing new innovative solutions such as ‘return hubs’, proposed last May by 15 Member States (see EUROPE 13411/3).
To speed up returns, countries such as France and Germany also called on the other Member States to apply the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’, which will officially come into force in 2026, earlier than planned.
Speaking at the end of the meeting, the Hungarian minister, Sándor Pintér, explained his “very simple position: we must not let the bad guys in, and if they don’t come in, we don’t have any problems with returns”. He also stressed the importance of visa policy in influencing returns.
In the first half of 2023, 217,100 non-EU nationals were ordered to leave an EU Member State, but only 38,900 were returned.
The concept of ‘return hubs’ would mean that the EU could send illegal immigrants who have received a return decision to designated third countries. They would wait there for the return procedure to be finalised, either to their country of origin, a transit country or another safe third country.
While nothing concrete has yet been agreed, a kind of consensus among the Member States to move in this direction emerged on Thursday, a diplomatic source confirmed. And the number of countries open to these options now exceeds 15.
These ‘return hubs’ would be nothing at all like the model devised between Italy and Albania, which concerns people rescued at sea and seeking asylum. The Italian model is still not operational. Nor would it be a ‘Rwanda’-type model, which was never realised in the United Kingdom.
Although the ministers did not go into detail, they did not rule out the possibility of exploring this route. On his arrival in Luxembourg, France’s new Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau, said that he did not want to “rule out any solution a priori”.
The German minister, Nancy Faeser, also explained that her country would be examining this avenue, as well as the legal framework and its feasibility on the ground. She reiterated that EU countries would first need a partner State. This will be “the decisive element in this type of cooperation”, and also the most “difficult” to resolve, in her view.
For his part, the Austrian minister, Gerhard Karner, said there was a need for new legislation on returns to make Austria and the EU “less attractive to people who often abuse the system”. The “people concerned must be more easily locked up or detained”, added the minister.
The Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum, Nicole de Moor, also argued in favour of this revision of the Returns Directive, whereas the previous revision put forward in 2018 has remained blocked at the European Parliament. “First of all, we need faster procedures for those who pose a risk to the security of our countries. Secondly, I think we need to introduce into our legislation an obligation to cooperate with the authorities on returns”, said the Belgian politician.
“We need to be able to revise the Returns Directive to reverse the burden of proof and ensure that we can change the rule to allow voluntary readmissions within the time limits”, added Mr Retailleau, who also wants to “recriminalise illegal residence”.
Pact on Migration and Asylum. On Thursday, France and Germany pushed for early application of the Pact on Migration and Asylum.
Berlin believes that it would be appropriate, in particular, to anticipate the border procedure that will be applied to asylum seekers from third countries with a positive response rate of less than 20%.
“I will insist on implementation as quickly as possible and, if possible, ahead of schedule. This is essential, particularly for screening procedures and for reviewing and investigating asylum seekers”, said the French minister.
On Wednesday, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, also announced that he would ask the European Commission to bring forward the application of the pact by a year.
However, the Hungarian minister believes that the date of application of the pact should remain 2026. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)