Assahafa.com
The European Commission has officially included Morocco on its first-ever list of “safe countries of origin,” alongside six other nations, in a move that significantly restricts asylum possibilities for citizens from these states.
The decision, announced Wednesday, aims to accelerate the processing of asylum claims and expedite returns of rejected applicants.
The list includes Kosovo, Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Morocco, and Tunisia. According to the Commission, citizens from these countries do not have the typical profile of refugees, which would allow for faster processing of their asylum applications.
“The fact that a country is not in the list now does not mean that this country is necessarily not safe,” an EU official told Euronews, explaining that the list is “dynamic” and can be expanded or restricted based on evolving human rights conditions in the countries concerned.
The proposal must still gain approval from the European Parliament and EU member states before taking effect across all 27 nations. If adopted, it would mark the first harmonized EU-wide list, though several countries already maintain their own national lists of “safe” countries.
France, for example, includes around ten countries on its safe list, among them Mongolia, Serbia, and Cape Verde. Italy’s list is more extensive, encompassing 19 nations including Ghana, Senegal, and Algeria.
According to European officials, these disparate national lists currently encourage asylum seekers to target countries with more flexible criteria, a situation Brussels aims to remedy with this standardized approach.
The Italian government, which pushed strongly for the measure, celebrated the announcement as “a success for the Italian government,” according to statements reported by multiple news outlets.
France, meanwhile, reportedly remained more reserved during negotiations, preferring to evaluate the Commission’s proposal on its merits.
Humanitarian organizations have sharply criticized the initiative. EuroMed Rights called the designation of these seven countries as “safe” both “misleading and dangerous,” citing ongoing human rights concerns in several of the listed nations.
The Commission dismissed these criticisms, insisting that the list “will not remove the guarantees offered to asylum seekers,” according to Commission spokesperson Markus Lammert.
For Morocco, inclusion on this list represents recognition of its efforts in migration governance. Since 2013, the country has implemented a National Strategy for Immigration and Asylum (SNIA), which has included regularizing tens of thousands of sub-Saharan migrants and opening social and educational services to these populations.
This latest EU initiative comes amid growing pressure on Brussels to tighten migration policies following the rise of right-wing and far-right movements across the continent.
In mid-March, the Commission had already unveiled measures to accelerate deportations of irregular migrants, including a legal framework for creating migrant centers outside EU borders, known as “return hubs.”
A previous attempt to create a similar list in 2015 was abandoned due to heated debates over whether to include Turkey, given concerns about judicial independence, minority rights, and press freedom there.
The new proposal considers that most EU candidate countries—including Albania, Bosnia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Turkiye—meet the criteria for designation as safe countries of origin, with the temporary exception of Ukraine due to the ongoing war.
