Austria becomes first EU country to adopt UK's Rwanda-style deportation mechanism

Austria has become the first European Union (EU) country to follow the UK's lead in seeking to establish a Rwanda-style agreement for deporting asylum seekers to a third country.

The UK's Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, signed a migration and security agreement with Austria on November 1 in which the country expressed its intent to pursue "third country" asylum programs, marking the first such agreement between an EU country and the UK, as reported by the Telegraph.

Austria's offshoring scheme will allow migrants deported to a third country to return to Austria if their asylum applications are approved, while those rejected will be sent back to their home countries. In contrast, the UK's Rwanda scheme involves deporting migrants to the central African state, with exceptions made if they can demonstrate that it would expose them to a risk of "serious and irreversible harm."

The agreement is significant for UK officials who are advocating for reforms to international asylum agreements, including the Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), in response to the global migration crisis. Austria has also been pushing for the adoption of a Rwanda-style scheme across the EU to address the surge of migrants across the Mediterranean and its eastern borders.

Austria, governed by a coalition between conservatives and the Green Party, has implemented stringent asylum policies since the 2015/16 migration crisis, including turning back some asylum seekers at its borders and establishing an agreement to send some rejected applicants to Serbia. The country has deployed over 4,000 police officers to patrol its frontiers, inspecting "risk vehicles" like vans and lorries at random.

Similar to the UK's agreement with Albania, Austria's Interior Minister, Gerhard Karner, is seeking to introduce new laws that would expedite the deportation of migrants to "safe countries of origin." Karner also aims to simplify the process of deporting foreign national offenders and has proposed a pilot project for fast-track asylum procedures at the EU's external borders.

Home Secretary Braverman highlighted the unprecedented challenge posed by the global migration crisis and its impact on communities and public services in the UK and Europe. Denmark is the only other country that has previously developed plans to deport migrants to third countries, although its proposals have been put on hold. The offshoring of migrant applications was originally pioneered by Australia as part of its sovereign borders operation, with asylum seekers located in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.