The European Union has identified seven countries that consider safe countries of origin, particularly as part of a proposal to speed up asylum applications from relevant countries.
Citizens of Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco and Tunisia will all be quick to track their claims, assuming they are likely to fail within three months.
European Commission’s Markus Lammert said it would become a “dynamic list” that could be expanded or reviewed.
EU countries have been trying to reform the rules of asylum since seeing an irregular influx of immigrants in 2015-16.
Last year, a migration and asylum agreement was agreed, but the EU will not take effect until June 2026, so we hope to promote two important rules on speeding up processing.
EU leaders last year called on the committee to plan to accelerate the benefits of immigration. This is because less than 20% of those sent back to the country of departure proposed.
Under the plan, EU countries will be able to quickly track people coming from either a safe country or one in five applicants in protected countries.
European countries, candidates to participate in the EU, are eligible for exceptions, but in countries of war, such as Ukraine, they are automatically considered safe.
Among the countries seeking reforms, Italy has seen a major influx since 2015. Other countries, including Germany, have imposed border controls to limit irregular immigration.
Italy is already one of several member states that have designated a safe country, but the agreed EU list is thought to prevent asylum seekers from targeting people with loose regulations.
In Morocco, Tunisia and Egypt, many irregular migrants have seen everything in recent years, leaving the coast to cross the Mediterranean.
This list is welcomed by Giorgia Meloni’s right-wing government. The Minister of Home Affairs Matteo Piantedosi welcomed it as a Rome success that had Bangladesh, Egypt and Tunisia on the list in the face of “purely ideological political opposition.”
Italian judges blocked bids to send Egyptians and Bangladeshi migrants to Albanian detention centres, as the Roman government deemed their country safe, but the European court said they could not be considered safe if their regions and minorities were not all the same.
The new proposal must be approved by both the European Parliament and EU member states, with some human rights groups expressing concern about the plan.
Euro-imparted rights – a network of human rights groups – warned that labeling seven countries as safe was misleading and dangerous. This is because it includes “a country with documented rights violations and limited protections for both its citizens and its immigrants.”
“We do not cut fundamental and human rights,” said Commission spokesman Markus Lammert. “Under EU law, Member States must perform an individual assessment of each asylum application in individual cases.”
