EU Names Seven Countries as Safe in Plan to Fast-Track Migrant Returns

The European Union has identified seven countries it considers safe countries of origin, as part of proposals to speed up asylum applications, especially from those countries involved.

Citizens from Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia would all have their claims fast-tracked within three months on the assumption that they were likely to fail.

Markus Lammert of the European Commission said it would be a “dynamic list” that could be expanded or reviewed, with countries suspended or removed if they were no longer seen as safe.

Ever since EU countries saw an influx of irregular migrants in 2015-16, they have sought to reform asylum rules.

A pact on migration and asylum was agreed last year, but the EU says as it does not come into force until June 2026 it wants to push through two key rules on speeding up processing.

EU leaders called on the Commission last year to come up with plans to accelerate migrant returns, as EU figures suggested under 20% of people ordered to leave were sent back to their countries of origin.

Under the plans, EU countries would be able to fast track people coming either from safe countries or countries from which a maximum of one in five applicants are given protection.

European countries that are candidates to join the EU will automatically be considered safe, although exceptions are possible, for example for countries at war such as Ukraine.

Among the countries pushing for reform was Italy, which has seen a big influx since 2015. Other countries including Germany have imposed border controls in a bid to limit irregular migration.

Although Italy is among several member states that already have designated safe countries, it is thought an agreed EU list would deter asylum seekers from targeting those with looser regulations.

Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt have all seen large numbers of irregular migrants leave their shores to cross the Mediterranean in recent years.

The list has been welcomed by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government. Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi hailed it as a success for Rome that Bangladesh, Egypt and Tunisia were on the list, in the face of “purely ideological political opposition”.

Italian judges blocked Meloni’s bid to send Egyptian and Bangladeshi migrants to detention centres in Albania, because while the government in Rome deemed their countries as safe, the European Court of Justice said they could not be seen as safe if all their regions and minorities were not.

The new proposals will now need to be approved by both the European Parliament and EU member states, and some human rights groups have expressed concern about the plans.

EuroMed Rights – a network of human rights organisations – warned that it was misleading and dangerous to label the seven countries as safe, because they included “countries with documented rights abuses and limited protections for both their own citizens and migrants”.

“We do not cut back on fundamental and human rights,” said Commission spokesman Markus Lammert. “Under EU law member states have to carry out individual assessments of each asylum application in each individual case.”