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It is shortly after 12 noon on Wednesday, Ursula von der Leyen is standing in front of the cameras on the ground floor of the Berlaymont, the headquarters of the EU Commission in Brussels. “The Commission’s migration and asylum package is a new beginning,” said the Commission President.
A new beginning, that should be the subject of a debate that has brought the Union to the brink more than once in the last five years. After months of delay, the EU Commission is now presenting its proposals for a new asylum and migration policy. And the first surprise is that the head of the commission makes the first one serve herself.
Von der Leyen has been in office for almost a year. Now she is showing for the first time that she is ready to take the lead on the refugee issue. Von der Leyen, the public relations expert, knows the power of images. Just as the photo of the drowned Syrian child Alan Kurdi moved many Europeans five years ago, now it is the photos of the burning refugee camp in Moria that are forcing the EU to act.
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But von der Leyen’s proposals are not revolutionary. Most of the immigration pact is not really new.
It must be supported by several pillars:
More efficient and faster procedures: Newcomers to the EU’s external borders need to be registered more thoroughly and at the same time more quickly. Irregular migrants must not only leave their fingerprints as before, but must undergo a full health and security check. After a maximum of five days, they should be assigned to different procedures. Arrivals from countries with a low recognition rate should immediately end in an expedited procedure with speedy repatriation.
Equitable distribution of responsibility and solidarity: “The member countries will be obliged to act in a responsible and supportive manner,” explains the Commission. Particularly in the event of a crisis, “without exception, all member states” must make their contribution to support member states under pressure. There should be a system of “flexible contributions”. Those who do not want to host asylum seekers from other EU countries must provide material assistance to other countries or contract “repatriation sponsorships”, that is, undertake to return rejected asylum seekers to their country of origin within a period of time. determined.
Strengthening of external borders: Coastal and border protection in the EU will be strengthened and, at the same time, there will be an EU system to return rejected asylum seekers. To this end, the office of a “return coordinator” is planned to coordinate the measures of the member countries.
Enhanced cooperation with third countries: “Tailor-made partnerships” with non-EU countries are intended to facilitate the fight against smugglers and the withdrawal of rejected asylum seekers. The new rules for legal migration should provide an incentive. For example, the Commission wants to introduce “talent associations” in order to attract workers to the EU specifically required by European companies.
The distribution fee is history
Most of this has been promised or often demanded, from speeding up sometimes extremely long asylum procedures to “flexible solidarity” between Member States and better cooperation with migrants’ countries of origin and transit.
What is characteristic, however, is what no longer occurs: a mandatory fee for the distribution of asylum seekers. Germany and other countries, where many people had come, challenged them for years. The issue has always caused disputes in the EU. In September 2015, the interior ministers decided on the mandatory quota, against the votes of Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. These countries still refuse to receive refugees or migrants.
By omitting the quota, the Commission is now reaching out to Eastern Europeans. Unlike his 2016 proposals, this time there are no penalties for objectors. Instead, the Commission offers € 10,000 per migrant adult from the EU budget for countries that wish to accept them.
However, it is doubtful that previous objectors will change their attitude. Because only in “times of increased pressure” should member countries be required to “cooperate more strictly,” they say. Countries could then choose whether to accept asylum seekers or to help with their return, said EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson. On the contrary, doing nothing is not an option.
“Many new Morias threaten to emerge”
The central problem: The governments of some countries have long benefited at the national level from the unresolved migration problem, especially the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, who likes to present himself as the savior of Christianity from Muslim mass immigration. . It’s unclear why he should voluntarily give up on this long-time favorite.
Erik Marquardt, an expert on Greens migration in the EU Parliament, sees further weaknesses in the Commission’s package, such as the classification of newcomers according to their country of origin. “That falls short of the Commission’s claim not to allow new camps like the one in Moria to emerge,” says Marquardt. “On the contrary, many new Morias threaten to emerge.”
If those with little chance of asylum stay on the Greek islands, for example, “that’s practically what we already have,” said the green politician. The massive acceleration of the process is “a godly wish.” “We heard that about the EU-Turkey deal in 2016.” However, it has shown that it is not possible to bring people back to countries that refuse to do so, and that it is not sustainable without prospects in the countries of origin. “These people are back at our borders two weeks later.”
“These proposals contradict the idea and meaning of the asylum law itself,” says Cornelia Ernst, spokesperson for asylum policy for the left-wing group in the EU Parliament. “It’s about defense, deterrence and, above all, deportations.”
Christian Democrats in the EU Parliament, on the other hand, praise the migration pact. The proposals are “a good starting point” for a sustainable asylum system, explained Roberta Metsola, internal policy spokesperson for the PPE group. Member countries should now approve it as soon as possible.
“The others will receive a return notice”
It is not yet possible to say if that will happen. The EU Council of Interior Ministers will provide a first reliable picture of the mood on 8 and 9 October. Federal Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU), who must now lead the negotiations for the presidency of the German Council, was already skeptical at the weekend. Many EU partners are so angered by the solo German majority effort to accept refugees from Moria that they don’t even think about going into the new legislative proposals in detail.
How difficult the debate is was also demonstrated Wednesday by a rather rude objection from Vienna. Von der Leyen had not even presented his ideas on refugee policy to his commissioners when the first rejection came. The distribution of refugees in the EU “failed,” Austria’s Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said. “Many states reject that. Nor will it work,” said the politician, who owes his steep career to his tough stance on refugee policy. Von der Leyen does not propose the mandatory admission of refugees.
At the Commission, however, the problem seems to be getting smaller and smaller. “We are no longer in 2015,” said Interior Commissioner Johansson. At the time, at the height of the crisis, 1.8 million people entered the EU irregularly, “and almost all of them were refugees”. In 2019 there were only 140,000 irregular immigrants, of which only a third had the right to asylum. “The others,” says Johansson, “receive a return notice.”
