EU leaders call for new law to ‘speed up’ migrant returns

BRUSSELS, Belgium: EU leaders on Thursday called on the European Commission to come up with new laws to increase and speed up migrant returns “as a matter of urgency” after talks in Brussels.

“The European Council calls for determined action at all levels to facilitate, increase and speed up returns from the European Union,” the bloc´s 27 leaders said in conclusions to their summit, asking the commission to submit new legislation to that effect.

Immigration is a highly sensitive topic in many of the bloc’s 27 member states, even if irregular migrants arriving in Europe last year were less than a third of the 1 million seen during the migration crisis in 2015, and numbers fell further this year.

“We need to see collectively how we can limit the flow of asylum seekers and stimulate returns,” Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof said. “It will be a process of trial and error, but it’s important that we look what we can do.”

The conservative Dutch government is weighing a plan to send rejected African asylum seekers to Uganda.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on X: “The peoples of Europe have had enough of illegal migration, failed economic policies and the bureaucrats in Brussels.”