Ursula von der Leyen sent leaders of all 27 EU member states a letter from Brussels calling for tougher action on illegal migration ahead of a European Council summit there.
Her intervention followed a crisis in the Spanish exclave of Ceuta, where about 70,000 migrants arrived from Morocco in the summer before the letter was sent.
Von der Leyen proposed an emergency response mechanism for cases where migration is used as an instrument of pressure, wider powers for the EU border agency Frontex and a higher rate of deportations from the EU.
“Europe must prevent threats to migration and not compromise on the protection of its external borders,” she said. She also said no state or non-state actor should use EU rules or values to “destabilize the Union”.
At the Brussels summit, EU leaders agreed to use all available leverage, including trade, development aid and visa policy, to speed the return of migrants who enter the bloc illegally.
The pressure to improve returns was underlined by the available figures. Of 484,000 non-EU citizens ordered to leave the EU in the year referenced, only 20% returned home.
Leaders also backed Poland’s plan to temporarily stop accepting asylum applications from migrants pushed across its eastern border by Belarus and Russia. Von der Leyen said refusing such applications was lawful as a temporary response to a hybrid attack by Minsk and Moscow.
Finland, which faced a similar challenge involving migrants pushed through its border with Russia, suspended the acceptance of asylum applications in July.
The summit also examined the possibility of “return hubs” outside the EU, where people whose asylum applications had been rejected could wait for deportation to their home countries. Italy’s right-wing government has already established such a hub in Albania, while the conservative Dutch government is considering sending rejected African asylum seekers to Uganda.
Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor, warned that external asylum-processing hubs could handle only a fraction of requests in a country as large as Germany. He and other leaders said the EU needed migrants as its population ages and pay-as-you-go pension systems face increasing strain.
Pedro Sanchez, Spain’s Socialist prime minister, described migration as positive and said Spain and other European economies desperately needed it to support ailing birth rates and welfare states.
Von der Leyen also delivered her annual speech to the European Parliament in Strasbourg.
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