EU governments signal faster action on failed asylum seekers
European Union governments took a tougher stance on migration, vowing to bolster border protection and deport failed asylum seekers more quickly amid a refugee crisis that is testing the bloc’s political cohesion.
EU interior ministers said their commitment to give shelter to genuine refugees — as well as their desire to retain passport-free travel in the region — meant they needed to have far stricter controls on who comes into Europe and for how long they stay.
It came as the first flight carrying refugees under the EU’s relocation plan left Rome for Sweden on Friday, carrying 19 Eritrean asylum seekers who had arrived in Italy.
“Let’s put rules, let’s fight smuggling, let’s start the project of returning all the ones who are illegally in Europe and provide help for those in need of international protection,” EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos told reporters in Rome on Friday.
Until now, the joint European response to the largest influx of refugees the EU has ever seen has focused on finding quick fixes: sharing the burden of 160,000 asylum-seekers from violence-ravaged parts of the Middle East and Africa who have already made the perilous journey to Europe, and sending support to front-line countries.
With EU leaders under pressure from their electorates to come up with longer-term measures to address the crisis, governments pledged to work together to increase the rate at which failed asylum-seekers are sent back to their countries of origin.
“We should be sending economic migrants back to their countries of origin and that’s why we need to crack down on those who are abusing our asylum system,” British Home Secretary Theresa May told reporters at Thursday’s meeting in Luxembourg. “We need to ensure we break the link between people making the dangerous journey to Europe and being able to stay in Europe.”
Avramopoulos said while he welcomed the first flight carrying refugees to Sweden under the relocation program, migrants should be under no illusions.
“It will be up to us where they will be relocated and if they don’t wish to do so unfortunately they must know they must make their way back to their home,” he said. “We must be very clear: they must obey.”
Ministers on Thursday asked the European Commission, the bloc’s executive arm, to put forward a plan before the end of the year for nations to share responsibility for external border control, a move that could prove controversial because it would introduce EU decision-making into an area that until now has been the preserve of national governments.
Greece, which has seen 400,000 migrants arrive by sea in 2015 compared to 43,500 in the whole of 2014, has come under most pressure to accept help from the EU.
“Europe is facing an enormous challenge,” said Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn, who led Thursday’s meeting. “There’s a constant flow of migrants, and from what we’ve seen from Syria, it’s not going to just stop.”
[Bloomberg]
