EU leaders convened in Brussels for a two-day summit where, despite President Zelensky’s visit and presentation of his “victory plan,” the spotlight was stolen by migration again. Brussels is under heavy pressure to tackle the shortcomings of its recently adopted flagship policy package, the Migration Pact, which failed to address crucial questions such as how to prevent illegal entries and how to effectively deport failed asylum seekers.
In a matter of months since the Pact was aggressively pushed through right before the EU election, it seems the general approach to migration completely changed in Europe. In large part, this is due to conservative electoral victories throughout the bloc that have prompted even mainstream governments to correct course.
In his doorstep interview, Dutch PM Dick Schoof said there was now a ”different atmosphere in Europe” regarding migration, but that’s probably an understatement.
Eastern European countries like Poland, Finland, and the Baltics want to suspend the right to asylum for Middle Eastern migrants trying to enter from Russia and Belarus as part of the Kremlin’s “hybrid warfare” against the EU. A nine-country coalition led by Italy is pushing for recognizing Syria as safe and reestablishing diplomatic relations with President Assad to speed up deportations. The Netherlands and Hungary have also submitted official requests to opt out of the common migration policy, in case no real solutions are found in Brussels.
But the biggest kicker is that the majority of member states, and now even von der Leyen’s Commission, are in support of establishing offshore asylum processing and deportation hubs, thereby preventing failed asylum seekers from roaming around Schengen.
To put it bluntly, Europe realized that Brussels’ precious Migration Pact is only “half-way” complete, as Czech PM Petr Fiala put it. “We’re now talking about things that used to be taboo. The return policy is not working, the number of people that are deported is 20%. That has to change.”
Of course, all these issues are still very sensitive and it will take some time until the details of each proposal are hammered out, but we do see a new direction at last, something that finally tries to respect the will of European voters.
The important place of migration on the agenda is also signified by the fact that select leaders held a ‘pre-summit’ meeting, organized by Italy, Denmark, and the Netherlands, just to prepare for the wider discussion and find common objectives. It was attended by leaders of Austria, Cyprus, Poland, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Malta, Slovakia, and even the Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen.
The main point on the agenda was Italian PM Giorgia Meloni’s presentation of her deal with Albania on ‘externalizing’ arrivals and returns, as well as extending the ‘safe country concept’ for transit countries. According to her office, Meloni “focused on the safe third country concept in view of the implementation of the rules of the new Migration and Asylum Pact, collaboration along migration routes with UNHCR and IOM on assisted voluntary returns as well as on ‘return hubs.’”
The Polish pitch—the temporary suspension of the right to asylum—would have been unheard of until just a few months ago, yet it garnered a surprising amount of sympathy among member states. After all, what Poland and the rest of the countries bordering Belarus and Russia are dealing with “is not a normal migration problem,” Schoof said. “Migration flows are being deliberately used by Russia and Belarus in a hybrid war.” Swedish PM Ulf Kristenson shared this position, saying he has nothing but “great respect” for the Polish decision.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose socialist-led government coalition suffered major blows from the center-right CDU and nationalist AfD in recent regional elections, also stressed the need to implement an effective and swift returns framework. “Criminals must be sent back. We must make immigration possible, give protection to those who need it, but not everyone can come,” he said.
At the same time, Scholz was skeptical about external detention centers, similar to the two facilities Italy is now running in Albania. Pointing to his country’s large intake of refugees—the fact that 300,000 people requested asylum in Germany just last year—he said the “return hubs” proposed by von der Leyen earlier this week could only absorb a “few small drops.” “If you look at the figures, [such concepts] are not really the solution for a country as large as Germany,” the Chancellor said, arguing for direct deportations to countries of origin instead.
Others, such as Bulgarian PM Dimitar Glavchev, were supportive of extending Italy’s Albania protocol and turning it into an EU-wide instrument. “Exporting such centers to third countries is a good example which we will support,” he said. Greek PM Kyriakos Mitsotakis was on the same page, saying he was “eager” to discuss externalizing border procedures and other “innovative solutions,” as von der Leyen called them, while also saying he was “happy” that the balance finally shifted in the EU and governments have started taking border protection seriously.
Danish PM Mette Frederikson expressed support for the Polish plan to counter Russia’s manufactured migration crisis, but also said she was “really, really pleased” to see that many EU countries now want significantly tougher measures against illegal migration into the bloc in general.
“No one thinks that people flee for fun, and we have a lot of wars and conflicts. But we cannot continue to bring so many people into Europe,” Frederiksen said. “I am really, really pleased that there are now beginning to be other governments in Europe who, like us, can see that we cannot just keep going.”
The discussion about migration is still ongoing in the Council chamber as we publish, and will probably continue tomorrow, the second day of the summit. No final resolution is expected until then either.
