EU plans migrant centres in Africa – without asking first

NOT one African country has agreed to host EU migrant screening centres on home soil, the European Commission admitted yesterday, as the Visegrad group of countries said it would boycott a mini-summit called to bridge divisions over migration policy.

Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European Commissioner for migration, announced plans for “regional disembarkation centres” a week before EU leaders meet for talks but admitted Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Niger and Morocco had not been consulted and no official proposals had been lodged with them. It came ahead of a minisummit on Sunday before a June 28 full European Council meeting in Brussels, which is set to be dominated by migration issues. And in another blow to hope of agreeing reforms to EU asylum law, anti-immigrant leaders of the Visegrad group – Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia – said they would not attend the mini-summit.

Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s Chancellor, who has allied himself with the Visegrad group on migration, will attend with Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria, the Netherlands and possibly Belgium and Malta. But Mateusz Morawiecki, Poland’s prime minister, said: “We are not going to attend. They want to re-heat a proposal we’ve already rejected.” But a compromise may have been reached last night, with Giuseppe Conte, Italy’s prime minister, wringing apparent concessions from Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor.