Ahead of a decision expected to declare the Maghreb states of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia "safe countries of origin," President of the German Bundesrat Stanislaw Tillich traveled to Morocco to seek support for faster deportations.

"All Moroccan authorities I talked to are willing to completely cooperate," Tillich, who is also the state premier of Saxony, told the German public broadcaster MDR on Friday.

In order to speed up the deportation process, Germany has to ensure that fingerprints of anyone whose asylum claim is denied are captured digitally to compare them with Morocco's database of its citizens. In the majority of cases, fingerprints are collected on paper in Germany, said Tillich.

Germany would also have to finalize its decision to declare Morocco as a safe country of origin, said Tillich. The German government voted in favor of such a proposal but it is still pending approval by the Bundesrat, Germany's upper house of parliament, before it can be implemented.

Declaring the trio of Maghreb countries safe for deportees was strongly criticized by Germany's Green Party.The opposition party argued that the state of human rights in the Maghreb area is "in a bad way." The Greens have so far blocked the decision in the Bundesrat.

Tillich said Morocco would "appreciate" being considered a safe country as it would keep people from leaving the country if they knew they had little chance of being able to stay in Germany.

Few migrants sent back so far

There are no official numbers of how many Moroccans live illegally in Germany. But the number of new arrivals from North Africa has dropped since the start of discussions to classify the region as safe. Approvals of asylum applications from Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians has dropped from 2.1 percent in 2015 to 0.7 percent in the first quarter of this year.

Deportations to Morocco have increased since Germany's Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere visited the kingdom in June, but numbers are still too low, the German government has said.

Germany has increased the number of staff in the Interior Ministry and the federal police to be able to provide faster provisional papers for illegal migrants without identification cards.

kw (AFP, MDR)