World Bulletin / News Desk

EU leaders are running out of time to reassure their citizens the European Union can control migration before authoritarian politicians win the high-stakes debate, the bloc's president Donald Tusk warned Wednesday.

"More and more people are starting to believe that only strong-handed authority, anti-European and anti-liberal in spirit, with a tendency towards overt authoritarianism, is capable of stopping the wave of illegal migration," Tusk said.

"If people believe them, that only they can offer an effective solution to the migration crisis, they will also believe anything else they say," Tusk added.

"The stakes are very high. And time is short," the European Council president warned.

Tusk said the EU collectively reduced illegal border crossings by 96 percent from the peak of more than one million in 2015, when Europe faced its worst migration crisis since World War II.

In order to bolster the external border, he proposed the summit endorse "disembarkation platforms outside Europe" to separate genuine refugees from economic migrants, who can legally be sent back to their home countries.