The EU wants to return more people to Africa, the Middle East and Asia

FILE PHOTO: Migrants board a fishing boat in the port of Paleochora, following a rescue operation off the island of Crete, Greece, November 22, 2022. REUTERS/Stringer

By Gabriela Baczynska

STOCKHOLM, Jan 26 (Reuters) – European Union migration ministers meet on Thursday to discuss visa restrictions and better coordination within the bloc so that more people without rights can be returned to their countries of origin, including Iraq. asylum in Europe.

Three years after the 27 countries of the EU agreed to restrict visas to countries that did not cooperate in the repatriation of their citizens, only The Gambia has been formally punished.

The European Commission, the executive body of the EU, proposed similar measures with regard to Iraq, Senegal and Bangladesh, although two EU officials said that cooperation with Dhaka on returns has improved since then.

Even so, the overall rate of effective returns in the EU stood at 21% in 2021, according to Eurostat data, the latest available.

“It is a level that member states consider unacceptably low,” said one of the EU officials.

Immigration is a highly sensitive political issue in the bloc, where member countries would rather discuss stepping up refoulements, as well as reducing irregular immigration, in the first place, than reignite their bitter disputes over how to divide up caregiving to those who arrive in Europe and win the right to stay.

“The establishment of a common and effective EU system for returns is a fundamental pillar for the well-functioning and credible migration and asylum systems,” the Commission states in a discussion paper for ministers, which it has had access to Reuters.

Some 160,000 people managed to cross the Mediterranean in 2022, according to UN data, the main route to Europe for people fleeing wars and poverty in the Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. In addition, almost 8 million Ukrainian refugees were also registered across Europe.

The ministers are meeting two weeks before the EU’s 27 national leaders meet in Brussels to discuss migration, and are also expected to call for more people to be expelled.

“Swift action is necessary to ensure effective return from the European Union to countries of origin, using as leverage all relevant EU policies,” read a draft of their joint statement, also seen by Reuters.

However, within the EU there are not enough resources or coordination between the various governing parties to ensure that every person without the right to stay is effectively returned or deported, according to the Commission.

“Insufficient cooperation from countries of origin is an additional challenge,” he added, naming problems such as recognition and issuance of identity and travel documents.

However, pressure from migration officials to punish some third countries with visa restrictions has in the past clashed with the EU’s own foreign and development ministers, or failed due to the conflicting agendas of various countries the European Union.

Thus, so far there has not been a sufficient majority among EU countries to punish any country other than The Gambia, where people can no longer obtain multiple-entry visas to the bloc and face a longer wait.

While EU countries such as Austria and Hungary are vigorously protesting irregular, mostly Muslim, immigration from the Middle East and North Africa, Germany is one of those trying to open up its labor market to workers from outside the bloc, in the face of manpower need.

(Reporting by Gabriela Baczynska; Additional reporting by Philip Blenkinsop; Spanish editing by Flora Gómez)

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