Economic migrants face deportation as European Union responds to refugee influx

“On top of that will come specific self-defensive measures to limit migration, such as sending back people to the border with Austria and the immediate transfer of newly arrived asylum seekers within Germany”, he said.

The ministers will welcome a proposal for the Frontex border agency to deploy “rapid return intervention teams”, and give Frontex more powers to organize returns jointly among member nations. Still, the Interior Ministry counted over 46,000 requests for refugee status by the end of August, compared to around 28,000 for all of 2014.

The interior ministers will later Thursday join European Union foreign ministers as well as their counterparts from the neighbouring Balkan countries of Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Kosovo, together with officials from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan, which host the majority of Syrian and Iraqi refugees.

At Thursday’s meeting in Luxembourg, European Union interior ministers will agree that “all measures must be taken to ensure irregular migrants’ effective return”, according to a draft statement seen by The Associated Press. But of the people who fail to obtain asylum or residency in the 28-nation bloc, less than 40 percent actually go back to their homes, and all agree that should change quickly. But the answer, he said, was not Cold War-style fortification: “We had a Wall in Europe long enough”, he said.

The talks also stressed that European Union states should detain refugees who may abscond before they are deported.

Although in the same conservative parliamentary bloc, Mr Seehofer is at loggerheads with Ms Merkel as he insists that limits on numbers allowed into Germany are needed.

The interior ministers committed to consider creating “regional” centres outside Europe.

Italy for years has demanded Europe shoulder more of the burden of the continent’s refugee crisis, even though most migrants prefer to pass through Italy en route to destinations further north. Alfano though is keen to show off the first flight to try to quiet anti-immigrant critics at home.

Streiter says coordination between ministries will be strengthened. It’s why we need to crack down on those who are abusing our asylum system.

Tomorrow the first planeload of people to take part in the EU’s relocation scheme leaves from Rome for Sweden.

Just a few days after more than 100,000 people turned out in Vienna to support refugees, an anti-refugee party is poised to land a huge coup – a win at the polls that could see them take control of the Austrian capital. Christian Bodewig, the World Bank’s human development sector leader for central Europe and the Baltics, wrote recently: “The real policy question for the countries of Central Europe and the Baltics today is therefore not whether to accept migrants or not but, rather, how to turn the challenge of today’s refugee crisis into an opportunity”.