EU to limit visas if countries refuse to take back migrants

The European Union moved Wednesday to speed up the return of unauthorized migrants, announcing plans to punish countries that refuse to take back their nationals by restricting visas for their diplomats.

While the number of people entering Europe in search of better lives has dropped dramatically over the past year, EU countries only send back around half of migrants denied visas, often because the migrants have lost or destroyed their ID documents and it's difficult to establish their nationality. Fake ID is also often used.

France, for example, is angered that Mali routinely refuses to take back people that Paris insists are from there. Formalizing a threat already made to some African countries by EU member states, the EU's executive Commission announced that it has "a new mechanism to trigger stricter conditions for processing visas when a partner country does not cooperate sufficiently."
Avramopoulos said he would shortly travel to Niger, a transit hub for many migrants bound for Europe via Libya, for talks with regional leaders, and that he would try to "convince these countries to take back their nationals."