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Despite a breakthrough in negotiations earlier this week, European Union leaders clashed again Friday over how to handle the human drama of migration that has tested their sense of common purpose during of the last decade.
The world’s largest club of rich countries remains divided between those who support Brussels’ initiatives focused on distributing migrants among members in an act of solidarity and those countries, like Hungary or even Poland, whose far-right governments consider the influx of foreigners as a threat. Italy is even going so far as to leave the EU to establish links with the United Kingdom in order to combat unwanted arrivals.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was blunt that European leaders are still far from reaching consensus ahead of their meeting in Granada, Spain. Orbán, who has repeatedly opposed European policies and taken a hard line against immigration, said he would not sign a deal at any time in the near future. He went so far as to compare the situation to being “legally violated” by Hungary’s other EU members.
“Agreement on migration, politically, is impossible – not today (nor) generally in the coming years,” Orbán said. “Because legally we are, how can I put it – we are raped. So if you are legally raped, forced to accept something you don’t like, how would you like to have a compromise?
The dispute centers on a deal reached on Wednesday which, if it becomes policy, would involve the creation of processing centers at the EU’s external borders to screen people as they arrive. The deal, accepted by the majority of EU interior ministers, will now go to the European Parliament, where further negotiations will take place before it can become binding.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki also criticized the deal, maintaining his government’s position that it is preventing migrants from entering for security reasons. Poland and Hungary categorically refuse any shared responsibility for migrants arriving in other member states.
President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen, however, remained optimistic when she took her turn in front of the microphones a few moments after Orbán. She called the deal a “great success.”
“Now the probability is very high and I am convinced that we will cross the finish line,” said Europe’s top leader.
Neither Hungary nor Poland could veto a final pact, but their refusal to comply with European policy in the past has bordered on provoking institutional crises, and the bloc would be keen to avoid similar tensions with its Eastern members.
The EU has been trying to craft a new common migration policy since it was overwhelmed in 2015 by more than a million arrivals, most of them refugees fleeing the war in Syria. Since then, he has focused on paying countries like Turkey, Libya, Tunisia and Morocco to do the dirty work of stopping migrants before they embark on the dangerous journey across the Mediterranean Sea, where nearly 30,000 people have died since 2014, according to the UN. agency.
A draft new pact on migration and asylum, which has been criticized by human rights groups as giving ground to tougher approaches, has been presented as the answer to the country’s migration problems. EU when it was made public in September 2020.
For the plan to come into force, officials and lawmakers say, an agreement must be reached between a majority of member countries and parliament by February, before European elections in June.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola said she hoped it would finally come to fruition.
“I remain optimistic because what has held us back in the past is the lack of political will,” Metsolas said. “There is no miracle solution, but let’s not kill this pact before adopting it. We owe it to ourselves and to our citizens.
Migration flows to the EU have increased this year, although they are down from the peak in 2015-2016. From January to October, some 194,000 migrants and refugees reached Spain, Italy, Malta, Greece and Cyprus by boat, compared to 112,000 in the same period last year, according to the International Organization for Migration .
The issue of migration was not going to be a priority at this informal meeting, where leaders were already grappling with the thorny question of how to continue expansion to include Balkan countries and a Ukraine immersed in the fight against invasion Russian.
But migration has been put on the agenda by Italy’s far-right Prime Minister, Giorgia Meloni. Italy has seen an influx of people in recent months, including the arrival of 7,000 people on the small fishing island of Lampedusa in a single day last month.
Meloni and British Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced Friday in an opinion piece published in London’s Corriere della Sera and The Times newspapers that they were forming an alliance against illegal immigration as part of an initiative bilateral beyond Brussels’ sphere of influence.
The day-long summit takes place in the picturesque town of Granada, just an hour’s drive from Spain’s southern coast, where boats full of people fleeing violence or poverty in Africa regularly wash up.
Spain’s maritime rescue service said Friday it had intercepted another 500 migrants aboard six boats approaching the Canary Islands, located off the northwest coast of Africa. Earlier this week, the small island of El Hierro in the archipelago, pop. 10,000 welcomed 1,200 migrants who arrived aboard open wooden boats believed to have set off from Senegal on a dangerous journey north.
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Wilson reported from Barcelona. Raf Casert in Brussels, Ciarán Giles in Madrid, Colleen Barry in Milan, Vanessa Gera in Warsaw and Danica Kirka in London contributed.
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