Migration policy in most European Union member states has become a nagging issue, heard not just as far away as Brussels but also as far away as Luxembourg, where the 27 interior and justice ministers of EU member states are meeting today.

The Justice and Home Affairs Council, or the Council of the EU as the second EU legislative body is officially called, which is meeting oddly enough under the Hungarian presidency, is officially dealing with the issue of deporting those migrants not entitled to international protection in the EU.

The issue of faster and more coordinated deportations had already been discussed, as protothema.gr wrote at the European Council (i.e. heads of state and government) last October.

At that time, the 27 had spoken of faster and more coordinated returns of illegal immigrants to their countries of origin, of cooperation between the 27 member states in the context of the internal security of the European Union and of European coordination to counter terrorist attacks by Islamist extremists who are, legally or illegally in the EU.

About a year later, the EU Council (i.e. the 27 ministers responsible) is meeting in Luxembourg on the very same issue. And according to the agenda, the 27 relevant ministers of the EU member states will deal with the return of illegal migrants and those not entitled to asylum.

According to Eurostat, the European statistics agency, in 2023, 484,160 non-EU citizens were ordered to leave the EU while only 91,465 ( or 18.9%) returned to their countries of origin.

Nikos Panagiotopoulos, the Minister of Immigration and Asylum, arriving at the EU Justice and Home Affairs Council, said that Greece comes to this meeting to seek and negotiate a European solution to a European problem.

According to Panagiotopoulos, “we have absorbed a lot of pressure by implementing a policy on illegal immigration that is tough but fair, and what we need to do is to find a way for everyone to respect what has been agreed in the European Pact on Immigration and Asylum. That is, to protect the external European borders, in accordance with the framework of European solidarity and fair burden sharing.”

Meanwhile, Bruneau Retigot, France’s new interior minister in Michel Barnier’s government, said the EU Council should not rule out any solution a priori.”

This statement has to do with so-called refugee hubs or hotspots, where asylum seekers could be held in non-EU countries until their application is accepted or rejected. Something Italy has done with Albania, for example, or what the EU is doing with Turkey.

As Proto Thema is informed, the issue of returns (i.e. the deportation of illegal immigrants) has already been discussed at the top level in the EU Council and is expected to be discussed by the 27 EU heads of state and government (European Council), which will take place on October 17 and 18. However, the main problem for an agreement is that the once ‘locomotive’ of the EU, namely the Franco-German axis, has gone off the rails. With President Macron and Chancellor Schultz, suffocating and trying to breathe before the next national elections, any decisions are being transferred to the future.

But as a German source had stated to Proto Thema, we have to get down from our pink cloud. Let me remind you that the Roman Empire fell because of immigration.