The EU has promised that it will step up its rate of returns for migrants and asylum seekers who are refused the right to stay in the bloc. On Wednesday, a plane carrying more than 60 Bangladeshi migrants landed in the capital Dhaka.
The EU border agency Frontex is to provide more support to Greece to deport rejected asylum seekers. The agency has been criticized for covering up human rights abuses against migrants at Greece's external borders.
EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson has reiterated that the EU needs migration. During a press conference announcing future EU migration policy, she declared that "investing in safe and legal routes is the only sustainable soultion to save [migrants'] lives."
According to a spokesperson from Germany’s interior ministry, 12,945 migrants were returned from Germany during the course of 2022, a slight increase on the previous year.
According to Germany's biggest tabloid newspaper Bild Zeitung, in 2022 Germany tried to send back over 68,000 migrants to other EU countries under rules governed by the Dublin accords. The majority of those attempts failed.
The actress Maty Sarr has since 2018 been working in Senegal with the volunteer network Migrants as Messengers (MaM) and running a theater group of returnees through the Senegalese Association for the Fight Against Irregular Migration (ASMI).
UNHCR has reiterated a call for a ban on forced returns, including of asylum seekers who have had their claims rejected, to the eastern provinces of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The call comes amid attacks on civilians and an escalation of armed conflict after a resumption of fighting.
The European Commission has awarded €171 million to Cyprus, Spain, Greece, Italy and Poland to help manage asylum reception and returns. The funds are aimed at easing the burden of migrant arrivals in the border Member States.
Thousands of displaced Afghans who lived in the capital Kabul have returned to their homes in rural Afghanistan. Each family received $200 to buy food and other essentials from UN refugee agency UNHCR.
The German state of Bavaria is seeking to strengthen its reintegration support through the "Bavarian Return Program." So far, the program has supported over 3,400 people in their reintegration in their country of return.
The 2021 Immigration Report by the IDOS research center noted that, between January and mid-November 2020, "Italy sent back 1,240 migrants and asylum seekers to Slovenia" as part of readmission agreements.
Deportations from Germany have risen again after a downturn during the pandemic. The Left Party has demanded an end to 'cynical policies'.