EU leaders have decided to create a new system of quarantining migrants in southern Italy and Greece to enable the forcible and swift registration, fingerprinting, expulsion, and, if necessary, detention for up to 18 months of those deemed to be illegal immigrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya.

A summit of EU leaders on Thursday is to grapple with the Mediterranean refugee crisis and is likely to give EU police and border control agencies beefed up powers to use coercion in dealing with the influx in an attempt to increase the numbers of those sent back whence they came.

Draft documents prepared for the summit, obtained by the Guardian and unlikely to be changed, say that the government leaders have decided to establish “structured border zones and facilities in the frontline member states [Italy, Greece, Malta], with the active support of member states’ experts to ensure the swift identification, registration and fingerprinting of migrants.”

Under proposals from the European commission for the summit, the EU’s borders agency, Frontex, is to be granted new powers to initiate and carry out forced deportations. At the moment such action and decisions can only be taken by national authorities. The proposals were spelled out earlier this month in a letter to EU interior ministers from Dimitris Avramopoulos, the commissioner for migration.

“The EU’s system to return irregular migrants is not sufficiently fast and effective,” he said. “The effectiveness of the system must be enhanced. I am open to exploring all options.”

Italy is particularly aggrieved that it is being left alone to cope with the crisis. For weeks EU governments have been embroiled in a battle over commission demands to ease Italy’s burden by creating a new quotas system sharing asylum-seekers across the union.

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In an article for the Guardian on Tuesday, Italy’s prime minister, Matteo Renzi, accuses the EU of betraying its basic values and decency in the handling of the crisis.

“It’s Europe that needs to demonstrate the values it believes in and stands for. Europe isn’t a bundle of economic ties, it’s a community of people, a shared destiny, and ideals.

“A European response is needed by Europe far more than it is needed by Italy,” he says.

“Italy could go it alone in the Mediterranean. But it’s Europe that cannot afford to let this happen. That’s the political point ... If we ignore these values now, while the Mediterranean burns, and children drown, it is Europe itself that we lose.”

The summit is to offer Renzi mild relief by agreeing to take 40,000 asylum-seekers from Italy and Greece over two years and share them out. The leaders say the issue will be settled by next month although it is not clear whether that will be merely a coalition of the willing or whether there will be mandatory quotas.

Given the fierce resistance in eastern Europe to the idea of being forced by Brussels to take in refugees, the sharing is likely to be on a voluntary basis.

Far from opening borders, Europe is closing down. In the past 10 days France and Austria have closed borders with Italy and turned hundreds back. The anti-immigrant rightwing Danish People’s party soared into second place as the real victor of last week’s general election in Denmark and is demanding the re-erection of border controls as the price for propping up a minority centre-right government. The anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant Freedom party in Austria has just chalked up significant regional electoral gains.

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Hungary has told Brussels to mind its own business and started building a four-metre-high wire curtain along its border with Serbia this week to keep migrants out.

“For my generation, Europe’s identity begins with the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was 14 at the time,” writes Renzi. “Today, my son is 14 and I don’t want the symbol of European identity to be a wall between Hungary and Serbia, nor a wall of distrust between the countries of Europe.”

In Strasbourg on Tuesday, Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, said Europe was facing a test it could not afford to fail.

“Globally, nearly 60 million people are forcibly displaced. This is an all-time high that needs a record response. Other regions with many more refugees are closely watching this continent,” he told the Council of Europe, the human rights watchdog that is quite separate from the EU. “Europe needs safer, regular, and orderly channels for migration and mobility.”

The summit document, however, focuses on keeping migrants out and quickly deporting those who do not qualify for asylum.

“The commission will set out by July 2015 how Frontex will bring immediate support to frontline states on return. The commission has announced its intention to propose to amend the Frontex regulation to strengthen the role of Frontex in return, notably so that it can initiate return missions.”

The Avramopoulos letter laying out the policy goes further, complaining that fewer than 40% of failed asylum applicants are expelled from the EU.

“To make sure that irregular migrants are effectively returned, detention should be applied, as a legitimate measure of last resort, where it is necessary to avoid that irregular migrants might abscond.”

They may be detained for six months, but also up to 18 months “in cases of non-cooperation”, while in emergency situations of large influxes as currently in Italy, the rules governing detention may be waived, meaning there is no need for “separate accommodation guaranteeing family privacy”, that venues other than prisons and detention facilities can be used to hold people, and the need for quick judicial review of the cases can be dropped.

“Where is the EU going?” asked Tony Bunyan, director of Statewatch, a watchdog monitoring civil liberties in the EU.

“Migrants, including pregnant women and minors, who have fled from war, persecution and poverty are to be forcibly fingerprinted or held in detention until they acquiesce or are expelled and banned from re-entry.”

On the eve of Thursday’s summit, Médecins Sans Frontières blamed the Mediterranean crisis squarely on the EU.

“This is an orchestrated humanitarian crisis, created by the failure of the EU to put in place adequate and humane policies and practices to deal with this issue,” said Aurélie Ponthieu, MSF migration adviser.

“The deteriorating situation is not due to unmanageable numbers of migrants and refugees. It is a direct result of chronic shortcomings in the EU’s policies in handling the new arrivals. Member states spend their time talking about closing borders, building fences, and issuing threatening ultimatums to each other.”