- As reported by euobserver on 12 September 2025, the EU will hold a bilateral summit with Egypt on 22 October in Brussels. Officials have said the summit will serve to improve the institution’s relationship with Egypt, which has become a central partner of the EU in migration control. Already in March, 2024, the EU signed an agreement to provide Egypt with €7.4bn in budget support and investment, in return for enhanced border control and migration policy cooperation.
- Asylum applications in the EU have decreased by 23% in first half of 2025, according to the European Union Agency for Asylum. France and Spain have become the main receiving EU countries for applications, replacing Germany. The number of Syrian nationals applying has decreased by 66%, making Venezuelan nationals the largest group of applicants.
- As reported by StateWatch, the EU, under the Danish presidency, has set forth a draft encouraging state and commercial airline carriers to become involved in counter-smuggling enforcement. The draft will be discussed at assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) which starts on 23 September. According to the draft, the ability of actors in the aviation industry to “identify and report potential cases of irregular migration and smuggling of migrants is particularly valuable in these efforts.”
- The Commissioner for Human Rights of the Council of Europe, Michael O’Flaherty, has called on member states to avoid externalisation migration policy measures that may result in human rights violations. Commenting on the release of the Commissioner’s new report on 4 September titled ‘Externalised asylum and migration policies and human rights law’, O’Flaherty urged governments developing these policies to “carefully assess their potential negative impact on human rights, as such policies can expose women, men and children to significant risks of serious harm and protracted suffering”.
- On August 1, 2025, the Court of Justice of the European Union issued a ruling that calls into question the migration agreement between Italy and Albania. The Ordinary Court of Rome had referred the list of “safe countries of origin” to the CJEU. This list formed the basis for outsourcing asylum applications to Albania. “A Member State cannot, however, include a country in the list of safe countries of origin if that country does not offer sufficient protection to its entire population,” the Court ruled. The ruling’s significance extends beyond the Italian case – it means that EU states can only designate a country as ‚safe‘ if protection is guaranteed „across all regions of the country“. This directly affects the feasibility of the EU’s announcement in April which designated Kosovo, Colombia, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Bangladesh and India as safe destinations for deportations – none of which meet the criteria of the CJEU ruling.
