EUROPEAN UNION governments agreed a proposal today to set up mass detention centres for refugees on the bloc’s external borders.

Those attempting to enter the EU could be held at such centres until their claims are assessed under the deal, which must be taken to the European parliament.

Spanish Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska called it a “huge step forward on a critical issue for the future of the EU.”

It would allow the EU to agree a “new pact on asylum and migration” by the end of the year, he predicted.

European Commission vice-president Margaritis Schinas said “time is running out” for the EU to adopt a harsher immigration policy, saying: “We need the pact done and dusted before Europeans go out to vote.” European parliament elections are due in June and far-right parties hope to make big gains.

“The whole of Europe is now watching us,” Mr Schinas warned. “If we fail, we will give fuel to false claims made by the enemies of democracy, by Russian disinformation, that Europe is incapable of managing migration.”

Climate change and the fallout from wars such as those inflicted on Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya as well as civil wars in countries including Syria, Ethiopia and Sudan have caused an increase in refugees travelling to Europe in recent years.

EU attempts to stem the flow have included ending search-and-rescue operations in the Mediterranean, leading to thousands of drownings, as well as widely criticised deals whereby Turkey is paid to hold refugees, or the Libyan coastguard sponsored to apprehend and return them there despite evidence that refugees in Libya have been tortured, dumped to die in the desert and sold in slave markets.

None of this has reduced the numbers seeking asylum, with more than 500 arriving in the Canary Islands today alone. 

Border states such as Greece and Italy where many refugees first arrive have long called for other states to take responsibility for more of them, something that countries further north including Hungary and Poland have refused to do.

Greece called today for the EU to apply sanctions to non-member states that refuse to take deported refugees off the EU’s hands.