While the migration issue will animate the summit of European heads of state and government on October 17 and 18, the interior ministers of the Twenty-Seven met on Thursday October 10 in Luxembourg to discuss the subject which is igniting the scene European politics since the start of the school year. After the reestablishment of German border controls in mid-September, declarations have multiplied in favor of a new European tightening of the screw against irregular immigration.
“We are in the process of converging even more, between all the Member States so that we can respond to the wishes of our people who want to be protected from migratory shocks”assured Thursday Bruno Retailleau, the French Minister of the Interior from the conservative right. More and more member states are calling for the outsourcing of asylum requests to third countries, or even the creation of centers for returns outside Europe. None, however, are ready to abandon the pact on migration and asylum, adopted in May after five years of negotiations in order to harmonize the procedures for filtering, examining and instructing asylum seekers at the borders, as well as their return if they are not eligible for asylum.
The Netherlands and Hungary have requested an exemption not to apply this pact, in the event of renegotiation of the European Union treaties. “But as long as there is no change to the treaty, we will apply it”assured Sandor Pinter, the Hungarian Minister of the Interior, on Thursday while his Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, continues to declare that he will never apply it. In fact, this pact remains ” priority ” European, confides a diplomat in Brussels.
“Studies will be carried out”
While it should theoretically come into force in June 2026, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez would like to accelerate its implementation. The latter proposed Wednesday in a speech in Madrid that the provisions of the pact “begin to be implemented in the summer of 2025 and not in the summer of 2026.”
The two countries do not follow the same reasoning. After two attacks committed by refugees (in May in Mannheim and in August in Solingen) and several electoral defeats, Olaf Scholz decided to undertake a much more restrictive policy on immigration. Pedro Sanchez, although the author of a speech on Wednesday very favorable to immigration, would like to find a rapid European solution to the increase in irregular arrivals in the Canaries. Since the start of the year, more than 30,000 people have sailed from the Mauritanian and Senegalese coasts to the Atlantic archipelago.
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Source: Lemonde