Agree, on paper, on future objectives, but conflicted on how to face one of their most immediate challenges, immigration. Yesterday in Granada, European leaders ratified their commitment to the next great expansion of the Union towards the east and the reinforcement of the continent's strategic autonomy, but they were forced to admit that this great consensus does not fit the hottest issue of the moment.
Despite the general joy over the agreement reached this week by the Council on the last pending regulation of the Migration Pact, which will allow negotiations to be opened with the European Parliament to agree on the final text, the incendiary rhetoric launched by the leaders of Hungary and Poland at their arrival at the informal European Council held in the Andalusian city made it clear from the first moment that there was no room for compromise.
The comparison chosen by the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, to express his Government's refusal to assume the legal consequences of the future Migration Pact, such as welcoming immigrants arriving in Mediterranean countries in the event of a crisis, was particularly unfortunate. “If they rape you, in legal terms, and force you to accept something you don't want, how can there be an agreement? It is impossible,” said Orbán in a defiant tone, who refuses to accept that decisions on migration policy can be approved by a qualified majority, that is, without the support of all member states.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, for his part, accused the EU of trying to introduce “a system of distribution of illegal immigrants” between different European countries. His government will not apply the reform “for reasons of national security,” he warned, before linking immigration and crime. “We are not afraid of this diktat from Brussels and Berlin,” added the Polish ultranationalist leader, who in a week will submit to the verdict of the polls in a close election against the Civic Platform candidate, Donald Tusk, the candidate of the European Popular Party. .
Faced with threats to veto the Grenada declaration, a document that condenses the Union's strategic agenda for the coming years, including enlargement, the only solution to move it forward was to exclude the paragraphs referring to immigration and publish it as a declaration by the president. of the European Council, Charles Michel.
This text states that immigration “is a European challenge that requires a European response” and reiterates that the irregular arrival of people “must be immediately addressed in a decisive manner.” “We will not allow smugglers to decide who enters the EU. We will continue to implement all our decisions effectively and quickly,” states the text, too soft for the claims of Warsaw and Budapest. The declaration “has the support of a significant number of countries,” Michel stressed.
The Italian Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni, who was elected with a strong anti-immigration speech and has contributed to shifting the Council's position on the issue further to the right, said she “understands” the position of Hungary and Poland, but endorsed the agreement and added that the differences with its Eastern partners are due to their different geographical location. “Today we found that 27 countries have agreed on the fact that the priority must be to stop illegal immigration,” celebrated the Italian far-right leader.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was unimpressed by Orbán and Morawiecki's threats and celebrated, instead, that after "many years" of blockade "something common has developed." The Migration Pact “lays the foundations for legislation that creates binding rules for the Twenty-Seven that cannot be blocked by isolated countries,” said Scholz, who hoped to resolve the current confrontation with the Italian Government over German subsidies to NGOs that collect immigrants. in the Mediterranean. “Everyone knows that Germany is the country that has admitted the most refugees, despite not having an external border. In many cases they have been given way without registering them,” he recalled.
European diplomatic sources believe that, despite the bad impression caused by the attitude of Hungary and Poland at the summit, the “moral” of Granada is that, “with their refusal to have the minimum declaration of the Twenty-seven, they have achieved the opposite than they intended", since they have made it clear that decisions "will always be taken by a qualified majority in the Council and never in the European Council [where they have veto power] because they will always block them."
When asked how the situation can be redirected and avoid repeating the fiasco that occurred after the migratory wave of 2015, when the Eastern countries refused to implement the decisions on the distribution of refugees approved without their support in the Council, both Michel like the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, opted to remain firm in the orientation of the imminent immigration reform. All measures point to a tightening of the conditions for access to the EU, greater control of external borders, stricter return policies and agreements with third countries to stop departures.
The debate on European immigration and asylum policy has taken on a “toxic” tone, says analyst Camino Mortera-Martínez, head of the European office of the Center for European Reform (CER), a think tank with offices in London, Brussels and Berlin. The lack of consensus on this issue has direct consequences on other aspects of European integration, she warns. “Immigration is an existential issue for the EU, because it is an inextricable component of the Schengen area,” the area of free movement of people. And that process, enlargement, "is underway and most member states assume it as an issue that will not be able to be stopped, although some would perhaps like it not to be so automatic."
The declaration from Granada, the first stop of the trio of meetings scheduled until the end of December to address decisions on the expansion of the club, sets for the first time the main lines of the process, which has been brutally accelerated by Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine, and conditions it on internal reforms, without setting an indicative date to carry it out, as Michel had proposed. “With the prospect of an enlarged Union, both the EU and future member states must accelerate reforms, especially in the area of the rule of law, in line with a merit-based process” in which the EU must make its own “preparations” and “reforms”.
Von der Leyen went further. To questions about the financial impact of enlargement for the current member states, which a Council report puts at 256 billion euros, he clarified that the EU does not intend to keep the current distribution of agricultural and cohesion aid intact when new countries enter. “We must keep in mind that we cannot simply extrapolate our policies from today to the coming decades, it is impossible,” said the president of the European Commission, marking distances from the aforementioned document. European leaders have asked the Community Executive to present estimates and projections. “We have to work on different scenarios and different figures,” added Von der Leyen, who reiterated that “all the expansions” have contributed to raising the standard of living not only of the new members, but of the countries that are already part of the club. .
Asked about Spain's position and the impact of Ukraine's entry, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, admitted that it is "evident" that "complex questions that will require political will" will have to be answered, but he evoked the experience of the joining the club in the eighties and reiterated support for the process. “How are we going to oppose other countries that have been knocking at the door for many years being able to integrate into the Union. Of course, we are a country that is always inclined and open” to enlargement, Sánchez said.
