The right-wing League party in Italy is proposing the creation of a detention and repatriation center in Ventimiglia, on the border with France, to solve "the problem of migratory flows on the Italian-French border."
Last month, Denmark's parliament voted a law allowing it to send asylum seekers to reception centres outside the European Union. Rwanda is among the potential host countries the Danes are negotiating with. It's the latest move in a tightening of Denmark's immigration policy. Copenhagen is already the only capital in Europe to have deemed the region around the Syrian capital Damascus to be sufficiently safe to send refugees from the area back there.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, Felipe González Morales, has highlighted that public health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic cannot have the effect of denying asylum and protection to migrants. He denounced to the Human Rights Council last week the practice of collective expulsions carried out by some countries.
About 1,000 people gathered outside the Danish parliament in Copenhagen on Wednesday to protest against the government’s plans to repatriate some Syrians who come from the area around the capital Damascus.
Italy's national detainee rights chief has said that severe problems remain at the country's migrant repatriation centers (CPRs). He is calling for structural changes as well as "legislative intervention."
European Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson is aiming to "significantly" speed up migrant repatriations and readmissions using a EU visa policy.
Italy's guarantor for the rights of detainees, Mauro Palma, on Monday visited the Center for Repatriation (CPR) in Gradisca d'Isonzo, and said the facility "shows the limits of all the CPRs: that of being an empty time in which one waits for a long time for a repatriation that may or may not happen."
Mediterranean states France and Morocco have inked a deal on child migrant returns. The text of the agreement on the care of unaccompanied underage migrant children notably calls for "concrete tools" to facilitate the return of minors from France to Morocco.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson traveled to Morocco for a two-day visit this week. Her aim was to improve cooperation with Morocco on the return of migrants and start the discussion over visa facilitation.
EU Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson, speaking at Med Dialogues 2020 in Rome, highlighted that the new EU Pact on Migration "represents a new beginning" in which "the central element is to strengthen cooperation with our neighbors and with our partners."
The Spanish Constitutional Court, the country's highest court, has announced that it would back fast deportations of migrants who attempt to enter Spain’s north African enclaves Ceuta and Melilla.
The Spanish authorities have set up a second temporary camp on the island of Gran Canaria after a first temporary structure on a pier in the south-west of the island quickly became overcrowded.