COPENHAGEN, Sept 4 (Reuters) - Denmark said on Friday it expects to be ready by the end of 2027 to send migrants without legal residency to a return hub outside the European Union, as five EU countries prepare to finalise plans for such facilities.
Immigration and Integration Minister Morten Bodskov will meet counterparts from Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Greece, known as the "Group of Five", in Copenhagen on Friday to agree on concrete steps toward the bloc's first partnership deal with a non-EU country on a return-centre arrangement.
"We have come a long way in the work of establishing a return hub outside the EU, and we are now closer than ever before," Bodskov said in a statement.
"That means that from the Danish side, we expect to be ready to send the first foreigners to a partner country by the end of next year," he added.
The minister did not say which country or countries the five nations could partner with.
The European Parliament in June approved an overhaul of migration policy aimed at speeding up deportations and allowing member states to set up detention centres abroad, in what critics say could weaken safeguards for asylum seekers.
The Council of Europe, a non-EU body that promotes human rights, democracy and the rule of law across the continent, in July said return hubs and other arrangements to transfer foreign nationals to third countries posed "considerable human rights risks", including ill-treatment and arbitrary detention.
(Reporting by Jacob Gronholt-Pedersen, Soren Jeppesen, Louise Rasmussen; editing by Terje Solsvik)
