EU Strikes Deal to Tighten Immigration Controls

The European Union has struck a deal to tighten immigration controls, making it easier to deport failed asylum seekers and hold families in detention centres on the bloc’s external borders. The Telegraph has more.

The agreement, reached after three years of negotiations, promises to overhaul how the bloc processes migrants and paves the way for rapid assessments at borders.

Those deemed to have the lowest chance of being granted the right to stay, including families with women and children, will be processed at facilities near the bloc’s external frontiers within three months.

Before that, authorities will have just seven days to determine the status of any asylum seekers.

Those from the likes of Turkey, India and Tunisia, who have a less than 20% acceptance level, are the most likely to be labelled as economic migrants and held at the border before being returned home.

Member states away from the major points of arrival, such as Italy and Greece, will be expected to house asylum seekers to ease the burden on southern Europe.

European capitals that refuse to take in migrants can instead opt to pay financial compensation to other EU countries hosting more asylum seekers or contribute to the cost of programmes in third countries aimed at reducing migratory flows.

But it offers no change to the bloc’s Dublin regulation, which dictates that asylum seekers should seek protection in the first EU country they enter, which is most often Greece or Italy.

The deal came after two days and nights of fraught negotiations between the EU’s Parliament, Commission and Council.

The overhaul was first proposed in 2016, when more than one million migrants arrived in Europe, many escaping wars in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan.

It also comes six months before Europe-wide elections, with polls displaying a surge in support for anti-immigration parties.

Worth reading in full.

Meanwhile, Macron has been “humiliated” by Marine Le Pen, who has been celebrating what she called “an ideological victory” after Macron’s Government finally had its tough new immigration bill approved, says Gavin Mortimer in the Spectator.