If you missed it live, watch the full footage of our event and enjoy the spirited discussion.
As much as politicians across Europe talk—often, it seems, to please their voters—about the need to control national borders, illegal migration policy tends instead to prioritise deporting those who have already arrived. The emphasis here is wrong; leaders should focus on stopping people from entering in the first place, and not on funnelling money into failed removal schemes.
This, at least, was among the most prevailing views shared by panellists at The European Conservative’s latest event—the fourth and last in a series on the European Commission’s ‘legislative priorities’ for 2023 and 2024.
Talking on Wednesday in the heart of Brussels, Managing Editor Ellen Kryger Fantini said the European Union’s migration policy was founded upon a number of significant “fallacies,” meaning, perhaps above all else, that there is “literally no deterrent to illegal behaviour.” These “failings,” she added, were on show in a recent string of serious sexual assaults against women by a 20-year-old Tunisian man living illegally in northern Italy—a tragic case which is “emblematic” of the approach which has been followed for too long.
‘Pooled Sovereignty’ was among the subjects to first be critiqued, and reasonably so, since it is the system of governance under which countries give up their power and hand it to a larger bloc “for the greater good.”
For businessman and former Brexit Party MEP Ben Habib, pooled sovereignty should be considered the “root of all evil.” Unfortunately, pooled sovereignty is what countries are left with in the vacuum left after abandoning national identities. Having “cease[d] to believe” that the nation is the ground from which culture and, in relation to this subject, policy should grow, our leaders have demonstrated a “lack of self-confidence” in their own systems and promoted the view that “we’re all citizens of the world,” with equal rights to reside wherever we wish. Mr. Habib added that “if you don’t believe in the nation-state, that’s when it all goes wrong,” because the need to protect and nurture one’s state “evaporates.”
Those who promulgate this view (often described as the “anywheres” rather than “somewheres”), are “living in a bubble,” according to Pierre-Marie Sève, the director of France’s Institut pour la Justice (Institute for Justice). He noted that such individuals believe security and migration to be two separate topics, but argued that there is a direct link between “migration and rising crime.”
Mr. Sève pointed to statistics revealing migrant overrepresentation in countless areas of crime. In Germany, for example, Afghan and Pakistani nationals are the most overrepresented group in rape accusation figures; 16 times higher than that of German nationals, according to figures sourced from national data. This, he said, has much to do with European judicial systems, punishments from which are responded to differently by a range of groups. Polling in the UK, for example, has suggested that nearly a quarter of Muslims support the introduction of sharia law, to which they hold greater loyalties, in some parts of Britain. In France, the figure is reported to be as high as 46%. Such sentiments prompted then-Chancellor Angela Merkel to declare as long ago as 2010 that “what applies [in Germany] is the constitution, not sharia.”
But European leaders, argued Mr. Sève, now appear to ignore these value separations.
Swedish MEP Charlie Weimers, the third contributor to the debate, noted that he has seen other members of the largely “woke and weak” European Parliament “fight tooth and nail to water down or outright delete” any attempts to change the current migration system. These, Mr. Weimers suggested, seem not to realise the “beyond-Biblical-exodus-scale” change taking place, which means our grandchildren will not enjoy the same culture as we do.
There is, as Mr. Habib put it, an “apparent complete collapse” in the will to enforce borders. Britain’s Border Force ought, he suggested, to be renamed “Border Taxi,” given the treatment that those who arrive illegally on the country’s shores after crossing the Channel from France—a safe country—receive.
Rather than look to change this situation, political elites “look at everything through deportation”—a policy, the former MEP insisted, destined to fail. The policy is supposed to deter, but won’t because migrants know there is only a “small chance” of them actually being removed. Indeed, British deportation schemes have become almost comical given the predictability of their failures.
But, while the picture may be bleak, critics of the European approach to migration should not, according to Mr. Weimers, give up hope—at least not completely. He said there are many things that could be done to change the current situation, for example the adoption of an Australian-style system in which migrants were told that if they attempt to come illegally, “you will never make Europe your home.” There ought, too, to be more support for countries on the edge of the Schengen Area, given that “their borders are the borders of all.”
Mr. Habib also pointed to the adoption of Article 33 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as an easy fix, ready for the taking. This states that
In a zone contiguous to its territorial sea … the coastal State may exercise the control necessary to … prevent infringement of its … immigration … laws and regulations within its territory or territorial sea.
He added that the West has “a lot to answer for” regarding the “disastrous 25-year period of Western interventions,” in response to which money should be sent to the heavily damaged countries. More importantly, the West must “start by ceasing bombing them.”
And above all else, it is important to recognise that any measures taken to tackle the migration question must, in Mr. Weimers words, be “rock solid,” because they will need to withstand attacks from an “army” of human rights lawyers, the press, campaign groups, and—as this panel discussion demonstrated—much of the political class.
