Under the proposed system, if a country like Greece, where many migrants from across the Mediterranean first arrive in Europe, decides to deport someone, and that person then moves to Sweden, the Swedish government will be obliged to deport them.
Finding a deal won’t be easy. Critics of the plan say one of the difficulties with mandatory recognition is that it could incentivize border countries, which generally favor the mandatory system, to make deportation decisions and then simply allow those people to go elsewhere in the bloc, where they become someone else’s problem.
“There is an idea for Germany, for example, that if there is mutual recognition of return decisions, Italy would just reject everyone and let them cross the Alps and go to France or to Germany,” said Eleonora Testi, senior legal officer at the European Council on Refugees and Exiles, an alliance of NGOs.
Some countries are “wary of becoming magnets for secondary migration” if the law is designed in the wrong way, an EU diplomat said. Denmark has proposed a middle way where countries must accept other decisions as a core principle, but with clear exceptions, the same diplomat said.
The proposed system could also cause legal and administrative headaches because of difficulties in dealing with appeals, meshing the legal systems of different countries, and translating decisions.
Hybrid tactic
To add to the political tension, the Commission on Wednesday will publish findings on which countries are most under pressure from migration, and will propose how funds and support for those countries should be divided.