European Council Summit – POLITICO

As European Union leaders meet again in Brussels, they are focusing on migration — and deportation — the block.

In recent days, Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Warsaw would suspend the right to asylum for migrants entering Poland via Belarus. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has closed his country’s borders to EU neighbors after a knife attack allegedly involving a migrant. France’s newly appointed Prime Minister Michel Barnier said EU deportation rules should be revised to speed up deportations.

On Friday, Italian Giorgia Meloni drew attention to her country’s now operating detention centers in Albania. An Italian warship transported 16 migrants to a single this week, sparking a controversial plan to host thousands of asylum seekers in a non-EU country.

Speaking of Italy, Meloni will also push at this meeting to begin talks to normalize relations with the war-torn Syrian dictator to ease the deportation of migrants back to the country. She will raise this as nearly 200,000 Syrians and Lebanese have fled Israel’s ground operation following its invasion of Lebanon in early October.

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