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Germany’s interior minister is optimistic that the European Union can achieve an agreement on returning unsuccessful asylum applicants to safe nations near their original country.
Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservatives won the national election in February on a pledge to reduce immigration levels, which many people saw as out of control, despite the fact that numbers had been declining for more than a year.
In a Saturday interview with the newspaper Welt am Sonntag, Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt stated that the use of third nations could only be implemented if there was an agreement across Europe.
“We need third countries that are prepared to take migrants who are objectively unable to return to their home countries,” he told the newspaper.
Earlier this month, the EU’s executive Commission suggested a plan allowing member states to reject asylum claims from migrants who went through a “safe” third nation on their route to the EU. The plans, which have been challenged by rights organisations, have yet to be ratified by national governments or the EU Parliament.
“No individual EU member state can create this model on its own: it will have to happen on an EU level,” Dobrindt said. “We are preparing the foundations for that right now.”
Dobrindt’s initial promises to tighten border controls on taking office angered neighbours who protested at plans to return to their territory those migrants found not to have a right to enter Germany.
An Italian plan to process asylum seekers picked up at sea in Albania has stalled amid Italian court challenges.
A scheme by Britain, which is not an EU member, under its previous Conservative government to send asylum seekers who arrived in Britain without permission to Rwanda was scrapped by Prime Minister Keir Starmer when he took office last year.
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