Overhaul of Europe’s Asylum System Includes Faster Deportation Process

From there, EU members could choose to help ease the load on countries that have seen the most migrant arrivals by sea — like Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain — by taking in some refugees or providing other support.

Those not willing to do that could take charge of deporting people whose applications are refused.

This option might suit Austria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, who are all reluctant to accept refugees.

Hanne Beirens, Director of Migration Policy Institute Europe, said this option allows countries with anti-migrant governments to become “the bouncers of Europe” but she raised concerns about the legal status of people in the process.

“Those put in a border procedure, it will be as if they have never entered EU territory,” she said. That legal limbo allows authorities to quickly put people on a plane or a boat home.

Austrian Interior Minister Karl Nehammer cautiously welcomed the plan, saying it “goes in the right direction in very important areas”.

He stressed the need for the EU to conduct deportations “faster, more strongly and more efficiently”, the Austria Press Agency reported.

Czech Interior Minister Jan Hamacek said his country was open to the deportation proposal.

The catch is that the plan involves “flexible forms of support, starting off on a voluntary basis”.

Stricter requirements to help out would only be imposed in crisis situations like Greece saw in 2015, when hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees made the short — but sometimes deadly — journey across from Turkey.

So far, voluntary EU migration management schemes have tended to fail.

EU Migration Commissioner Ylva Johansson ruled out the use of mandatory quotas for sharing migrants.

When asked whether more effort would be made to save people in the Mediterranean, she said: “Not according to our proposal. It will be the opposite, I guess.”

Johansson said this, combined with swift screening and return procedures, should make people “think twice before paying a lot of money to the smugglers and before risking their lives going into these very dangerous boats.”

The proposals suggest the EU will continue holding unauthorized migrants in the Greek islands until they can be sent away.