European Union home affairs ministers meet in Warsaw on Thursday to discuss migration and the internal security of the bloc.
As capitals take increasingly restrictive positions on migration, ministers are expected to discuss a pending proposal by the European Commission for more effective deportations.
On the agenda are also so-called “innovative solutions” like the agreement between Italy’s far-right government with Albania under which migrants rescued at sea are brought to asylum centres in Albania to be processed outside the bloc.
Ministers are also likely to discuss migration from Belarus and Russia to the EU after Poland announced plans last year to temporarily suspend the right to asylum at its borders.
Warsaw and other Eastern European capitals accuse Moscow and Minsk of pushing migrants to the EU’s eastern external border in order to destabilize the bloc and undermine security.
Human rights organizations deplore the harsh push-back of migrants at the border.
“It should go without saying that pushing people back into dense forests in freezing temperatures is cruel, dangerous and patently illegal,” said Adriana Tidona from Amnesty International.
“This is not a solution by any measure. Poland has obligations under international law to individually assess people’s cases,” she added.
Activists documented 116 deaths along the EU’s border with Belarus between summer 2021 and May 2024.
Under EU rules, every country is obliged to first check where the person seeking protection has entered the bloc before sending them back to the country of entry.
