EU leaders set course for tougher policy to send back irregular migrants

BRUSSELS - European Union leaders agreed on Thursday to use all their leverage, including trade, development aid and visa policy, to speed up returns of migrants illegally entering the bloc and asked the European Commission to urgently draft a law.

Immigration is a highly sensitive topic in most of the bloc's 27 member states, even though irregular migrants arriving in Europe last year were a third of the 1 million seen during the crisis in 2015, and numbers fell further this year.

Leaky external EU borders are destroying the EU's Schengen passport-free travel area, fuelling the rise of far-right parties and affecting election results across Europe, making migration a key political problem.

"The European Council calls for determined action at all levels to facilitate, increase and speed up returns from the European Union using all relevant EU policies...