Meloni Pushes European Leaders to Toughen Up Migration Rules

(Bloomberg) — Europe’s leaders began mapping out a stricter migration policy as countries contend with political pressure to show an improvement in reducing the number of arrivals. 
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni met with counterparts from several European Union nations on Thursday to detail the country’s recent agreement to ship asylum seekers to nearby Albania, a move that’s drawn condemnation from some humanitarian groups. The meeting happened ahead of a summit in Brussels with all 27 EU leaders. 
While certain leaders such as Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala praised the Italian policy, saying the EU should seek similar deals with other countries, others have criticized the plan as either a potential risk to human rights or insufficient to the task of controlling migration flows.
The EU leaders agreed in their summit conclusions that “new ways to prevent and counter irregular migration should be considered, in line with EU and international law.” 
The EU is struggling to maintain a coordinated approach as every country faces different migration pressure. Border countries such as Italy and Greece deal with migrant arrivals while nations like Germany and Sweden are destinations where many asylum seekers want to settle. Others such as Poland and Finland are contesting with what they call the “weaponization” of migration, facilitated by Russia and Belarus to weaken the bloc’s cohesion. 
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz expressed doubts about the Italian model, calling instead for a quicker implementation of the EU’s proposed asylum reform.
“What is clear is that concepts that are very small drops when you look at the numbers are not really the solution for a large country like Germany,” Scholz said before the EU Council meeting on Thursday. 
Germany has come under criticism from other EU member states after it decided to reintroduce border controls with its neighboring countries. Scholz was compelled to adopt a more restrictive policy after the right-wing, anti-migrant Alternative for Germany scored victories in several state elections. But at the same time, there is also strong opposition among his own Social Democrats against relocation centers outside the EU.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has raised some eyebrows with his announcement that Warsaw would temporarily suspend the right to seek asylum in the country, although the plan won support from leaders. The move will apply to illegal attempts to cross the border by migrants, which he claimed are being flown in from the Middle East as part of “hybrid war.”
“Russia and Belarus, or any other country, cannot be allowed to abuse our values, including the right to asylum, and to undermine our democracies,” according to the summit conclusions, which expressed solidarity with Poland. The final statement also pledged to counter “the instrumentalisation of migrants for political purposes.” 
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen sent a letter to the bloc’s capitals ahead of the summit broaching the prospect of speeding up implementation of parts of the migration and asylum pact and said the bloc should explore setting up “return hubs” for asylum-seekers in non-EU countries.
Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris said that any innovative solutions to migration “must be underpinned by our common European values in terms of international law, human rights” and must meet the bloc’s “humanitarian obligations.” 
He added that the UK’s scrapped plan to relocate some asylum seekers to Rwanda was “downright stupid,” but there were other options the EU could examine.
–With assistance from Katharina Rosskopf, Lyubov Pronina, Natalia Ojewska and Veronika Gulyas.
(Updates with council conclusions from the fourth paragraph.)
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