"If we are not able to carry out a return of illegal migrants back to their homeland, our work will reside only in issuing documents to those who come," said the Slovak Interior Minister Denisa Saková on Wednesday. She made the statement at a press conference of the Salzburg Forum of Interior Ministers of central European countries, which is taking place in Bratislava until Thursday.
The EU-wide return rate has fallen from 45.8 percent in 2016 to 36.6 percent in 2017. "There are many partial reasons for this, including non-cooperation by third countries, insufficient powers of escorting police officers in the territory of another member state or preferring readmission to direct expulsion," she added. Apart from migration and border protection, the main topics of the forum are asylum policy and fighting human, drug and weapon trafficking.
In addition to permanent members, including Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia, this year's forum also includes interior ministers from the Western Balkans countries and Moldova, so-called friends of the Salzburg Forum.
