Brussels (Brussels Morning Newspaper) – As European Union leaders congregate once again in Brussels, they’re concentrated on migration to the union and how to deport people from it.
European Union leaders reaching the summit in Brussels said that the bloc required tougher policies to expel illegal migrants, but admitted that agreeing on new steps would take time.
Poland and Baltic countries have stated they would also call for a common EU perspective against Russia and Belarus utilising migrants as a weapon against the EU.
Immigration is a highly susceptible topic in many of the bloc’s 27 member states, even if irregular migrants coming to Europe last year were less than a third of the 1 million seen during the migration situation in 2015, and numbers fell further this year.
What are EU leaders’ views on deporting illegal migrants?
“We need to see collectively how we can limit the flow of asylum seekers and stimulate returns,” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof expressed. “It will be a process of trial and error, but we must look at what we can do.” The conservative Dutch government is considering a strategy to send abandoned African asylum seekers to Uganda.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban expressed: “The peoples of Europe have had enough of illegal migration, failed economic policies and the bureaucrats in Brussels.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz stated he expected disagreements on immigration among member states to persist, adding that, for a country as big as Germany, asylum processing hubs outside the bloc would only be capable of handling a fraction of requests. “One thing is quite clear, if the common European asylum system is implemented more quickly now, if we make progress in terms of efficiency, for example about the return directive, then that will help,” he stated. He and other leaders highlighted the ageing continent continued to require immigrants to come in and work in the bloc.
The EU approved in May a new set of laws and processes for handling migration, called the Migration Pact, but it is not due to be fully enforced until mid-2026, leaving the bloc in a complicated growth period.
How is Poland addressing migrant crossings from Russia to Belarus?
Individually, Poland wants to temporarily stop asylum rights for migrants crossing over from Russia to Belarus, in a move many notice as a violation of the EU’s charter of fundamental rights. Warsaw states it draws its inspiration from Finland, which, confronted with migrants pushed across the border from Russia, discontinued asylum rights in July.
