EU urges members to deport more migrants who are ineligible to stay

This image provided by German humanitarian organisation Sea-watch shows a boat carrying a group of migrants in distress in the southern Mediterranean Sea (Christian Gohdes/Sea-Watch via AP)

The European Union has urged its member countries to deport more people who enter Europe without authorisation and who are not eligible to stay, saying that only around one in five would-be migrants who should be sent home actually are.

“Last year, we had a return rate of only 21% of those who are not eligible to stay,” EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson told reporters at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.