On Friday 19 December, the Member States’ permanent representatives to the EU approved the provisional agreements reached with European Parliament on 18 December on the new rules relating to the concepts of ‘safe third country’ (STC) and ‘safe country of origin’ (SCO)(see EUROPE B13776A7).
The negotiations had taken longer on SCO, due to Italian rapporteur for the ECR Alessandro Ciriani’s wish to limit judicial review of the sources of information allowing a country to be...