BRUSSELS is drawing up plans to starting dumping failed asylum seekers in countries on the EU’s borders in a bid to boost flagging deportation rates.
Member States are mulling a move that would see migrants who can’t be returned to their homelands packed off elsewhere in Europe.
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EU diplomats said under the scheme many would likely end up in the Balkans as a “safe” region on the bloc’s eastern frontier.
Foreign affairs ministers met yesterday to discuss the plan amid alarm that the deportation rate for failed asylum seekers has slumped from 45 per cent to 36 per cent.
Romania’s home affairs minister Carmen Daniela Dan said the planned change to the bloc’s border policy would “contribute to an increased return rate”.
She hailed tough new criteria which have been drawn up to identify migrants who might be a security threat or likely to abscond before deportation.
And she added that there will also be “the possibility to return a third country national to any other safe third country” than where they come from.
But the proposals have sparked an internal Brussels row, with the European Commission effectively disowning them.
‘AGAINST THEIR WILL’
A spokeswoman said: “The Commission has expressed strong reservations on the legality and feasibility of allowing returns to third countries that are not countries of origin or transit, against the person’s will.”
Currently migrants can only be deported back to their countries of origin or those they have travelled through to reach Europe.
But returning them to their homelands is often made impossible by the fact many destroy all traces of where they come from before arriving.
And they often can’t be sent back to the countries they travelled through – such as war-torn Libya – because they’re deemed too dangerous.
EU diplomats said a scheme to resettle failed asylum seekers anywhere else would likely have to be voluntary to comply with international law.
They added that the plan, agreed by Member States, will still have to be negotiated on with the EU Parliament.
The move comes after the bloc tightened up its visa rules to punish countries which refuse to take back rejected migrants from Europe.
Under the new measures states that don’t cooperate with the EU on returns will face “restrictive measures” including a hike in fees for travel visas.
The EU Council said Brussels would start “using visa processing as leverage” to boost the number of deportations.
It said “where a country is not cooperating” eurocrats can apply “restrictive visa measures related to visa processing and, eventually, to the visa fee”.
But those states that do help with deportations will be rewarded with swifter decisions on visa applications and a reduction in the fee the bloc charges.
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