A furious row over planned changes to Europe’s migration rules overshadowed an EU summit Friday, although supporters of the reform vowed opposition from Poland and Hungary would not derail it.
The leaders of Poland and Hungary stopped the other leaders from including migration in a joint statement. This made the meeting end on a bad note of disagreement. The European Council president, Charles Michel, made a separate statement about asylum policy and border protection by himself. The leaders of France and Germany said the process of making laws would continue as planned.
Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, who hosted the summit, said that the most important thing was the agreement on crisis regulation made by interior ministers a few weeks ago. He didn’t think the disagreement was a big problem.
The meeting in Granada gave Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Hungary’s Viktor Orban a chance to show off their popularity with the people in their own countries, as they face important elections. Morawiecki said he officially rejected the part about migration in the summit’s conclusions.
Orban caused anger by saying the EU was “forcing through” migration laws, comparing it to Hungary being “legally raped”.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron explained that even though Poland and Hungary’s disagreement stopped migration from being mentioned in the final statement, it won’t stop the proposed law, which was supported by most member states on Wednesday.
Macron said the written words made some countries disagree, but he thinks it’s not a big problem because most people agreed with it. He also mentioned that countries agreed to work together more with places where migrants come from or pass through.
‘Current approach not working’
Migration surged to the top of Brussels’ agenda after thousands of asylum seekers landed on the Italian island of Lampedusa, highlighting the urgency of consolidating a unified European response.
On Thursday, leaders from across the continent had met under the auspices of the European Political Community (EPC), a forum to develop a joint geopolitical strategy.
But Spain, which hosted both meetings, failed to put the crisis on the agenda of that summit, frustrating several members, notably Italy and Britain who convened a side meeting on the issue.
Italian Prime Minister Georgia Meloni and Britain’s Rishi Sunak, with support from France and the Netherlands, talked on the side and suggested doing more with other countries to stop boats with asylum seekers from even leaving for Europe.
In an article they wrote in newspapers in Britain and Italy, they said that European countries are realizing that the current way of doing things isn’t working. They said their tough approach is already giving good results, and they encouraged other leaders to act quickly against criminal groups smuggling people to stop illegal immigration in Europe.
On Wednesday, the member states agreed on the final part of changing the rules about how to handle asylum seekers and migrants who come irregularly. This sets up a push for the European Parliament to turn it into law before next year’s elections.
The new Pact on Migration and Asylum aims to ease the pressure on countries like Italy and Greece, which are the first places many migrants arrive, by moving some of them to other EU countries.
People who don’t want to take in asylum seekers would have to give money to those who do.
Meloni, who had disagreed with Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz before the meeting, now feels content with the direction Europe is going. She sees it as more practical in its approach to stopping human trafficking and illegal immigration.
Recent EU data, released on Friday, showed a 29% increase in sending irregular migrants back in the second quarter of 2023 compared to the same time last year. In total, 26,600 people were sent back, and the number told to leave went up by 9.0% to 105,865.
By August 31, EU countries were hosting almost 4.2 million Ukrainian refugees because of Russia’s war. Half of them were in Germany and Poland.
SOURCE:FRANCE24