Sweden to Expel up to 100,000 Migrants

• 01.30.2016, 16:57
•  Europe,  World

Swedish authorities have asked the police and the country's migration agency to prepare for expulsions of up to 80,000 refugees and migrants who arrived in 2015 and whose applications for asylum could be rejected.

"We are talking about 60,000 people, but the number could climb to 80,000," Interior Minister Anders Ygeman told, according to the Telegraph.

Mr Ygeman said the expulsions, normally carried out using commercial flights, would have to be done using specially chartered aircraft, given the large numbers, staggered over several years.

More than 160,000 people sought asylum in Sweden last year. About 55 percent of applications are expected to be accepted.

In 2014, Sweden received half as many asylum seekers - 81,000. The same year, about 35,000 people were granted asylum.

Sweden, which is home to 9.8 million people, is one of the European Union countries that has taken in the largest number of refugees in relation to its population.

The European Court of Human Rights should work out an action plan in anticipation of a growing number of Rule 39 cases from migrants coming to Europe, the court's president said in Thursday.

ECHR Rule 39 is a request for interim measures to the court. Majority of the cases under the rule concern the applications for the suspension of an expulsion or an extradition.

"At the moment the impact of migrant crisis on the court is not significant in quantitative terms, however we have to put in place an action plan in order to anticipate and properly deal with a possible influx of Rule 39 requests," Guido Raimondi told reporters,  Sputnik News informs.

The European Court of Human Rights has recently received 24 requests from migrants who did not want to be returned to Hungary, he noted, adding that rule 39 was applied in 10 of those cases, which referred to applicants of different nationalities, Afghans, Palestinians, Syrians and others.

"Moreover, on September 22, 2015, two cases were communicated to Austria, where the court invited Hungary, Serbia, the UNHCR [UN refugee agency], the Commission for Human Rights of the Council of Europe to intervene as third parties," Raimondi explained.

The Commission for Human Rights of the Council of Europe has agreed to mediate these two cases to be dealt with in the first half of 2016, the ECHR president concluded.

The European Union is currently struggling to manage a massive refugee crisis, with hundreds of thousands of people fleeing conflict-torn countries. Migrants from the Middle East and North Africa are transiting to prosperous EU countries, with some of them refusing to leave for various personal reasons.