| The EU has rejected a request from the UK to cooperate on taking illegal immigrants back to their place of origin.Prime minister Rishi Sunak had hoped an agreement would help to tackle the small boats crisis.European Commission officials told Britain’s national security adviser that it was not open to a new readmission deal. The Times states they have seen seen official notes.The plan was to return migrants crossing the English Channel to the the European countries in which they had first claimed asylum. The UK had intended to create a bilateral agreement with France concerning the illegal channel crossings but the French rejected this idea stating it must be solved at the EU level. Double edged sword:An agreement with the EU would probably mean Britain would have to take its share of all migrants entering the zone illegally. This covers those entering by boats to Italy or Greece, either as stowaways in ferries or lorries from the wesetern Balkans. It might end up worse than the current situation.At an EU summit the pm won an agreement [for what that is worth] from Ursula von der Leyen, president of the EU Commission, to negotiate a new partnership with Frontex, the EU’s border agency, to help combat small boats.As it stands EU sources said the union was unlikely to have the capacity to negotiate with the UK in the near future because member states cannot even come to an internal EU agreement about reforming its so-called readmissions scheme. New proposals to replace the Dublin convention, which the UK left in 2020, mean that each EU member state has to take at least 30,000 migrants a year or pay €20,000 for every migrant they rejected. Hungary and Poland both blocked the plan. Originally it was designed to help share the burden that falls on Greece and Italy who have the nearest borders to many economic migrants prepared to pay for the long passages.It seems unlikely that the EU solution would go down well with UK voters.London 19. July 2023-pw-Imprint/ImpressumTo protect your privacy we neither store cookies nor use any google add-ons such as google analytics |
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