Under the shadow of the war between Hamas and Israel, a conflict in which they see a high potential for regional escalation that can bring more refugees to the gates of Europe, the leaders of the Twenty-seven held a new debate yesterday strategy on immigration. The result, renewed tough messages towards traffickers and the undocumented.
"We will focus on curbing irregular arrivals and for this we need 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 sign an association agreement with Egypt that combines investments with migration control measures. Cairo, he assured, is "very open" to the initiative, inspired by the pact signed in the summer with Tunisia.
The resurgence of violence in the Middle East is, for now, a humanitarian challenge, but it may pose a migration challenge for Europe, French President Emmanuel Macron said. "This conflict will continue, evolve and may have migratory consequences, but it is too early to say." If the conflict widens, the EU will have to react in time to be ready, he added.
As the European migration pact closes and the new rules come into force, Brussels has proposed to redouble the fight against "the cynical business" of human traffickers with the same harshness with which it fights organized crime networks. At the end of November, he will present a new proposal to strengthen European legislation in this field. At the same time, the Commission wants to work more with member states to raise 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 is currently at 22% .
In return, the promise yet to materialize that more legal migration routes to the EU 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 of it." The more the EU does to open up these opportunities, "the stricter we can be with irregular immigration", summarized Von der Leyen. Immigration is, along with financial aid to Kyiv, the only area in which the majority of the Twenty-seven agree that more investment needs to be made at the European level.
It is the clearest conclusion of the European leaders' debate on the Commission's request to increase the EU budget by 66 billion euros to face the challenges that were not foreseen when 2020 was agreed, such as the pandemic, the war of Ukraine, the increase in migratory pressure or, now, the resurgence of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The twenty-seven, facing their own problems balancing their accounts just months before the EU reactivates its tax rules, responded by rejecting Brussels' approach outright.
"We must maintain financial support for Ukraine, but at some point the European institutions should review their own figures," replied the Prime Minister of Belgium, Alexander de Croo. "As with national budgets, sometimes you have to tighten your belt," added Dutch acting Prime Minister Mark Rutte. Categorically, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz advocated that spending be limited and encouraged the Commission to find the money in other items not exhausted, a prospect that worries the countries of the East, who fear receiving less funds and being penalized for their high deficit
"We are fully aware that the crises do not only affect the EU budget, the member states also have many obligations", commented Von der Leyen yesterday. Brussels has asked for 50,000 million; they would be macro-financial aid to Ukraine, of which only 17 billion would be lost funds (the remaining 33 billion would be loans); only Hungary and Slovakia expressed reservations about these figures. About 15,000 million would be dedicated to immigration; 19,000 million, to cover the impact of the rate hike on the financing of the debt contracted due to covid; 3,000 million would go to a reserve fund, and about 2,000 million, to the salary increase of civil servants. The final battle has been left for the December summit.
