States along Europe’s external borders have to be secure if fears presented by migration were to be allayed, a new report by Nationalist MEP Roberta Metsola says.

Presented to the European Parliament Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs yesterday, the report, authored by Dr Metsola and Italian socialist MEP Kashetu Kyenge, says that not everyone who arrives in Europe is eligible for protection and these people have to be safely returned.

“Only 36 per cent of those who were ordered to leave the union were returned in 2014. There is, therefore, a clear need to improve the effectiveness of the union’s return system,” she said during a press conference in Strasbourg.

On relocation, it insisted that every member state had to play its part.

The report says: “The esta-blishment of urgent relocation measures is a move in the right direction, but the numbers we have seen so far are very disappointing.

“States must fulfil their obligations as soon as possible,” she said.