Under pressure from the far right, focus of EU leaders moves to more deportations and tighter borders
Civil rights activists protest as migrants intercepted in Italian waters arrive at Shengjin port in Albania. Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s plan to hold thousands of asylum seekers there while their claims are processed has been blocked by the courts. Photograph: Adnan Beci/AFPThe first group of people seeking asylum in the European Union shipped to Albania by Italian authorities were not there for long.
‘For them, the Soviet past is something to protect’: History a political battleground in Stalin’s homelandThe ruling, which saw the men then transported to Italian soil, drew stinging criticism from Meloni’s right-wing government, which is now trying to find a way around the legal hurdle. When the leaders of the 27 member states met for a summit in Brussels last week, most were pushing for the EU to take a harder stance on asylum. Leaders spoke one after the other about the pressure their states were under, according to several sources. In particular there was a drive to increase the number of “returns” of failed asylum seeker – another word for deportations.
She is critical of the new right-wing Dutch coalition government – which includes the far-right Freedom Party – which has floated a plan to send failed asylum seekers to Uganda. Keeping asylum at the top of the political agenda without really addressing problems in the system suits anti-immigrant parties on the right, Strik says. “It gives me an impression that they want to stay in crisis mode, as it serves their political interests.
The problem has been that countries asylum seekers came fromoften do not want to co-operate and accept returns. Lena Düpont, a centre-right German MEP with the Christian Democratic Union, says this is a clear “bottleneck” in the system. The EU should leverage offers of more favourable visa schemes, to get buy-in from countries of origin to accept returns, she says.
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