At a high level meeting in Luxembourg on Thursday (October 19), EU justice and interior ministers discussed the need to speed up the implementation of planned asylum reforms within the bloc. The talks took place amid heightened security concerns linked to the Middle East conflict and following recent deadly attacks in France and Belgium, which were carried out by foreign nationals. 

Ahead of the meeting the EU migration commissioner Ylva Johansson said it was important that people who posed a threat to European citizens be "immediately returned".

"We need to be more efficient, close the loopholes and be quicker on decisions to carry out returns," she added.

The 45-year-old Tunisian who killed two Swedish nationals in Brussels on Monday before being shot dead by Belgian police had been issued with an order to leave the country after his asylum application in Belgium was refused.

He had first arrived in the EU via the Italian island of Lampedusa in 2011 and had also lived in Sweden.

The young Russian-born Ingush minority man who fatally stabbed a school teacher in northern France last Friday had been on a state watchlist of people known as a potential security risk. But according to the French interior minster, Gerald Darmanin, he could not have been deported under current legislation.

Renewed push for migration pact

As he arrived for the meeting on Thursday, Darmanin called for the long-discussed EU Pact on Migration and Asylum (migration pact) to be implemented quickly.

The call was echoed by Nicole de Moor, Belgium’s state secretary for asylum and migration, who wrote on social media ahead of the meeting that the Brussels attacker had applied for asylum in four European countries. De Moor and other proponents of the EU Migration Pact say major issues of gaps in security and ineffective returns of third-country nationals will be improved with the overhaul of migration policies.

Belgium has been working to build support for the pact so that it can be finalized by the end of the year before it takes over the EU presidency in January 2024.

Currently, about one-fifth of people whose asylum cases fail in Europe are actually returned, according to the Reuters news agency.

Also read: Talking continues in Europe to resolve EU migration pact deadlock

Many EU governments also support further agreements with third countries, like the deals with Turkey and Tunisia, to prevent migrants from reaching Europe. New agreements are proposed with Egypt and Morocco in exchange for stepped up controls to stop people leaving those countries.

But such deals continue to face criticism, with many arguing that the agreements with Turkey and Tunisia have failed to deter large numbers of irregular migrants – with around 250,000 people reaching the EU so far this year. Some claim such agreements encourage migrant smuggling.

Others also continue to raise concerns that migrants' human rights would be put at risk as a result of insufficient safeguards against unsafe returns and the increased use of detention.

The implementation of some proposals discussed by ministers on Thursday – such as tighter border controls – could continue to hold up progress, as concerns persist about the impact on free movement and the right of assembly within Europe. 

With AP, Reuters