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That was followed by a letter from von der Leyen this week that promised action and said the bloc will draw lessons from a deal Italy struck with Albania to send some migrants there.
Yet some countries, including Spain, poured cold water on the more radical ideas, also noting the need for regular immigration routes amid a workforce shortage and an ageing population, a diplomatic source said.
“Safe and legal pathways” were “key for regular and orderly migration”, the final statement said.
Disagreements caused a previous effort to overhaul migrant return rules to fail in 2018.
“All these solutions of ‘migration hubs’, as they are called, have never shown in the past to be very effective, and they are always very expensive,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told reporters.
‘New wind’
The general hardening in tone comes despite a drop in detected irregular border crossings into the European Union, which fell by more than 40 percent this year after reaching an almost 10-year peak in 2023.
“There is a new wind blowing in Europe,” said Dutch politician Geert Wilders, whose nationalist populist party came top in general elections in the Netherlands last year.
Wilders was in Brussels to attend another event: a meeting of the far-right Patriots for Europe group in the European Parliament.
Hard-right parties often riding anti-immigrant sentiment performed strongly in European Parliament elections in June, and have topped recent national and regional votes in Austria and Germany.
France also tilted to the right after a snap parliamentary election this summer.
Germany tightened border controls in September in response to several suspected Islamist attacks.
And this month Poland said it would partially suspend asylum rights, accusing Russia and Belarus of pushing migrants over the border to destabilise the country.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also attended Thursday’s meeting to present Kyiv’s “victory plan” to defeat Russia, and EU leaders discussed other topics, including the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon.
(AFP)
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Publish date : 2024-10-17 13:39:00
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