Migration policy’s weakest point – Leo Brincat
When the European Court of Auditors set out to gauge the effectiveness and efficiency of the EU’s return policy, it was effectively auditing, for the first time, the weakest point of European migration policy. Every year since 2008, about half a million non-EU citizens have been ordered to leave the EU because they had entered it, or were staying in it, without any authorisation. However, fewer than one in five actually return to their own countries outside Europe. In an earlier special report on migration management, we had identified eight reasons and factors for poor returns within the context of an audit of the arrangements for asylum and relocation of migrants. In this particular audit, we decided to probe one particular area deeply: the level of cooperation with non-EU countries in the return of irregular migrants. Since figures could fluctuate between one year and another and between one member state and another, we decided to approach the whole problem holistically. We set out to assess whether the suite of measures that the European Commission took after the 2015 migration crisis has improved cooperation with priority third countries or not. We distinguished between...