Ministers exchanged views on the external dimension of migration and the situation along the main migratory routes. Under this point, the European Commission presented its recent action plan on the Western Balkan route, which follows its action plan on the Central Mediterranean, issued on 21 November. The Commission was invited to propose action plans on the remaining routes.

Apart from this point on the agenda, Ministers also discussed the following issues:

• the state of play on asylum and migration files: the inter-institutional cooperation between the Council and the European Parliament will allow restarting work on 5 legislative proposals under the Pact on migration and asylum.
• ongoing work on a regulation to address situations of instrumentalization in the field of migration and asylum: this regulation would allow Member States facing a situation of instrumentalization to exceptionally derogate from some of the common European asylum rules, where necessary and proportionate.
• how to improve the effectiveness of the EU return policy: they underlined the importance of the visa leverage while underlining the need to use leverage in different fields to improve the third country cooperation on readmission.

Additional information on the Justice and Home Affairs Council from 8-9 December 2022 can be found on this page.