Don’t expect European commissioners to start warning that the continent is going to hell because of illegal migration, like Donald Trump did at the United Nations General Assembly earlier this week. But some do appear to be upping their rhetoric, perhaps partly as a result of the U.S. president’s words.
Whether this shift is expressed in action is, of course, another matter altogether.
Dubravka Šuica, who is the commission chief responsible for the Mediterranean region and demography, said after Trump’s speech that the EU isn’t doing enough to deport migrants whose asylum claims have been rejected.
That’s the same Šuica who was criticised by conservative MEPs earlier this year for presenting a ‘Demography Toolbox’ which they said prioritised increased migration—albeit legal migration—over policies to boost birthrates and safeguard Europe’s cultural identity.
Knowing that we are able to return only 20% of those who came illegally is not a good result. So we need the return directive to allow member states to return those who came illegally.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni also said in her UN speech that some of the conventions that impact lawmaking on border control need to be updated. She was no doubt talking about the more-than-seven-decade-old European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) when saying:
These are rules enshrined in an era when mass irregular immigration did not exist, nor did human trafficking. Conventions that are no longer current and which, when interpreted ideologically and one-sidedly by politicised judiciaries, end up trampling on the law instead of upholding it.
Meloni is already leading the charge to update the ECHR so that it matches “the challenges that we face today.”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
