2023-10-28 00:00:00
Under the shadow of the war between Hamas and Israel, a conflict in which they see a high potential for regional escalation that could bring more refugees to the doors of Europe, the leaders of the Twenty-Seven held a new strategic debate yesterday on immigration. The result, renewed messages of toughness towards traffickers and simpapeles.
“We are going to focus on stopping irregular arrivals, and for that it is necessary to increase the capacity of neighboring countries to monitor their borders and carry out search and rescue tasks,” summarized the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, who has proposed signing an association agreement with Egypt that combines investments with migration control measures. Cairo, she assured, is “very open” to the initiative, inspired by the pact signed this summer with Tunisia.
The upsurge in violence in the Middle East is, today, a humanitarian challenge, but it could pose a migratory challenge for Europe, said French President Emmanuel Macron: “This conflict is going to be prolonged, it is going to evolve and it can have consequences.” migration, but it is too early to say.” If the conflict widens, the EU will have to react in time to be prepared, he added.
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While the European migration pact is closed and the new rules come into force, Brussels has proposed to redouble the fight against “the cynical business” of human traffickers with the same toughness with which it fights organized crime networks. At the end of November it will present a new proposal to strengthen European legislation in this area. In parallel, the Commission wants to work more with member states to increase the percentage of irregular immigrants who are returned to their countries of origin because they do not have the right to stay in the EU, which currently stands at 22%.
In exchange, the yet-to-be-realized promise that more avenues for legal migration to the European Union will be facilitated. Last year, 3.7 million foreign workers arrived regularly in the EU. “Legal immigration is important for the EU, we need more.” The more the EU does to open up these opportunities, “the stricter we can be on irregular immigration,” Von der Leyen summarized. Immigration is, along with financial aid to Kyiv, the only area in which the majority of the Twenty-seven agree that more investment is needed at European level.
It is the clearest conclusion of the debate of European leaders on the Commission’s request to increase the community budget by 66 billion euros to face challenges that were not foreseen when it was agreed in 2020, such as the pandemic, war of Ukraine, the increase in migratory pressure or, now, the worsening of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Twenty-Seven, faced with their own problems to balance their accounts a few months before the EU reactivates its fiscal rules, responded by flatly rejecting Brussels’ approach.
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“We must maintain financial support for Ukraine, but at some point the European institutions should review their own figures,” responded Belgian Prime Minister Alexander de Croo. “Just like with national budgets, sometimes you have to tighten your belt,” added acting Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Categorically, the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, defended limiting spending and encouraged the Commission to find the money in other unexhausted items, a prospect that worries Eastern countries, which fear receiving less funds and being sanctioned for their high deficit. .
“We are fully aware that crises do not only affect the EU budget; Member states also have many obligations,” Von der Leyen commented yesterday. Brussels has asked for 50 billion; They would be macro-financial aid to Ukraine, of which only 17 billion would be non-refundable (the remaining 33 billion would be loans); only Hungary and Slovakia expressed reservations about these figures. Some 15 billion would be dedicated to immigration; 19,000 million, to cover the impact of the rate increase in the financing of the debt contracted by covid; 3,000 million would go to a reserve fund and about 2,000 million, to increase the salaries of civil servants. The final battle has been left for the December summit.
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