The German government is looking into the possibility of outsourcing asylum applications to countries outside of the European Union according to a proposal from one of the parties in the ruling coalition, a trend which has been seen in several European countries this year.
The libertarian Free Democrats (FDP) have proposed sending asylum seekers to non-EU countries in order to process their claims, with the party’s parliamentary rapporteur on migration, Ann-Veruschka Jurisch, telling Euractiv that the issue was agreed upon in the coalition agreement the party signed with the Greens and the Social Democrats (SDP).
“I expect the interior minister to review as soon as possible how processing asylum claims in third countries can be facilitated, as this is what we agreed in our coalition agreement,” Jurisch said.
FDP parliamentary group leader Christian Dürr also commented on the proposal saying, “Such a regulation would create clarity about the protection status and prevent people from embarking on the dangerous route across the Mediterranean without any prospects. It’s also a question of humanity.”
North Rhine-Westphalian Prime Minister Hendrik Wüst, a member of the centre-right Christian Democratic Union (CDU), has also backed the idea, stating that Chancellor Olaf Scholz should conclude agreements with non-EU countries offering financial incentives for them to take asylum seekers found in Europe to process their claims.
Wüst added that the policy would have the goal of reducing the number of migrants who die trying to cross the sea to Europe. At least 2,978 migrants have been reported dead or missing so far this year, according to statistics from the International Organisation for Migration (IOM), with the vast majority taking place in the central Mediterranean Sea.
“This means that those who cannot expect protection status do not come to our country in the first place. In doing so, we must provide financial support to these partner countries. It’s about agreements with performance and consideration,” Wüst said.
“The partner state should declare its readiness to take back anyone who irregularly crosses the sea and land borders from its country to the European Union,” he said, likening any agreements to the 2016 EU-Turkey migration deal, which has seen the EU send Turkey billions of euros.
Germany is just the latest country to make attempts to outsource asylum procedures to foreign countries and comes after the United Kingdom attempted to partner with the African nation of Rwanda to send migrants there who had crossed the English Channel illegally.
The policy was largely seen as a way to disincentivise migrants from making the trip across the Channel but UK MPs later claimed that there was little evidence the policy was actually deterring migrants.
After concluding a £140 million deal with Rwanda in 2022, so far not a single asylum seeker has actually been sent to the country after the UK High Court deemed the entire project to be unlawful, claiming Rwanda was not a safe third country. The first and only attempted deportation of migrants to Rwanda took place in June of 2022 but was cancelled after a legal challenge.
UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman has placed some of the blame for the failure of the scheme on the UK’s continued membership of the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which grounded the initial deportation flight.
Denmark has also floated the idea of working with Rwanda to outsource asylum processing but paused their initiative in January of 2023.
Migration and Integration Minister Kaare Dybvad stated, “We still have the same ambition, but we have a different process. The new government’s program calls for the establishment of a reception centre outside Europe in cooperation with the EU or other countries.”
France, another country which has seen a dismal number of successful deportations in recent years, is looking to bypass the ECHR entirely by ordering deportations of criminals and dangerous individuals to be carried out before the ECHR can rule on their cases, accepting a small fine instead.
The new policy is part of a larger immigration reform bill proposed by France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin, which has been proposed following a number of terrorist attacks by refugees and asylum seekers in recent years, the most recent of which saw a teacher in Arras murdered by a Chechen Islamist radical.
In Sweden, the centre-right government led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson has opened five new deportation centres in a bid to increase deportations as the government is looking to increase the number of people with deportation orders voluntarily leaving the country.
The ‘return centres’ allow migrants with deportation orders to live on their premises while their deportations are being processed.
Sweden, like Germany, Denmark and the UK, is also examining creating centres outside of the EU for migrants who have been refused entry into Sweden but cannot be deported back to their home countries.
The Austrian government is also considering similar solutions, hosting UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman on Thursday, November 2nd, to learn from the British experience of outsourcing asylum applications to third countries.
