Austria has become the first EU country to follow the UK’s lead and seek to adopt a Rwanda-style deal to deport asylum seekers to a third country.
On a visit to the country on Thursday, Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, signed a migration and security agreement with Austria in which the two countries agree to work more closely together with Vienna also stating it would pursue “third country” asylum schemes.
It is the first EU country to sign such an agreement with the UK, whose £140 million Rwanda deportation scheme is on hold pending the outcome of a Supreme Court judgement on its legality.
Austria’s offshoring scheme will differ from the UK’s in that migrants deported to a third country will be allowed to return to Austria if their asylum applications are successful. Those rejected will be returned to their home countries.
Under the UK’s Rwanda scheme, migrants will be deported on a one-way ticket to claim asylum in the central African state unless they can show that it would expose them to a risk of “serious and irreversible harm”.
The agreement represents a coup for Rishi Sunak and Mrs Braverman who are pushing European partners to reform international asylum agreements including the Refugee Convention and European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) in the face of a worldwide migration crisis.
Austria has also been pushing the EU to adopt a Rwanda-style scheme across Europe as part of reforms to deal with the unprecedented influx of migrants across the Mediterranean and its eastern borders.
Gerhard Karner, Austria’s interior minister, said: “The UK has a lot of experience when it comes to processing asylum applications outside of Europe in the future. That was an important theme in my meeting with the Home Secretary in Vienna because Austria can benefit from this experience.
“We will continue to make a consistent effort for the EU Commission to advance and enable such procedures outside of Europe.”
Austria, which is ruled by a coalition between Karner’s conservative Austrian People’s Party and the Greens, has had relatively strict asylum policies since the migration crisis of 2015/16.
These include powers to turn back some asylum seekers at the country’s borders and a framework agreement to send some of those whose applications are rejected to Serbia. More than 4,000 police officers have been sent to patrol the frontiers, inspecting “risk vehicles” such as vans and lorries at random.
Like Britain’s agreement with Albania, Mr Karner is also seeking to introduce new laws to fast-track deportations of migrants to “safe countries of origin”.
Karner also wants to make it easier to deport foreign national offenders, and proposed “a pilot project for rapid asylum procedures at the EU’s external borders”.
Mrs Braverman said: “The global migration crisis is the challenge of our age, with the UK and the European continent seeing huge movements of people travelling illegally across our borders. This is placing an unprecedented burden on our communities and public services.
“Austria is a close ally in tackling illegal migration, and we have already begun sharing knowledge of our actions and strategies such as third country removals.
“This joint statement is a commitment to work more closely together to achieve our aims, and enhance our cooperation on a wide range of security challenges.”
Denmark is the only other country that has previously drawn up plans to deport migrants to third countries but its proposals have been on hold. Offshoring of migrant applications was pioneered by Australia as part of its sovereign borders operation, with asylum seekers located in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
The Supreme Court is expected to rule on the legality of the UK’s Rwanda policy in mid-December. If successful, the Home Office hopes to have the first deportation flights in the air in February.
If it is ruled unlawful on the basis that there is a risk of migrants being returned to their home country in breach of their human rights, Mr Sunak will come under intense pressure from many Tory MPs, including at least eight members of his Cabinet, to quit the ECHR.
