The Europe shielded by fences and walls, which sends refugee seekers to internment camps outside the territory – so as not to see or feel them – and which is focused on how to deport more and better, is taking shape. The European Union is cracking down on the right to asylum, one of the values on which the foundation of today’s bloc, born after the Second World War, is based.
It is a political gesture in a continent that is also going through a demographic winter and losing human capital and competitiveness. It does not arrive accompanied by a migratory wave that tests the seams of the reception system, as happened in 2015. It does so at a time in which irregular arrivals to the Union – on average – have decreased, but in which the extreme right and anti-immigration populism is becoming strong and the traditional right has begun to ride the same wave.
On Thursday, at a key summit for community asylum policy, the leaders of the Twenty-seven called for considering “new measures to prevent and counteract irregular immigration.” A large box in which many also put the creation of deportation centers in non-EU countries, to which the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, opened the door with a letter sent to the leaders on the eve of the meeting and which the Italy of the far-right Giorgia Meloni has already launched in Albania.
The head of the community Executive, who will soon begin her second term and which was ratified thanks to the votes of her political family, that of the European People’s Party, together with social democrats, liberals and Greens, has deepened her flirtation with extreme positions. right and begins to exhibit what will be the immigration policy it designs for the next five years. The German conservative has announced a reform of the regulation on deportations to toughen it – as fifteen countries had demanded – in which, in addition, a formula could fit to open expulsion camps outside the community territory.
It is an idea that was banished, due to its legal doubts, in 2018. And that, now, is making its way with the example of the Meloni protocol in Albania, despite the fact that it has failed miserably in its launch this week. Precisely, due to legal problems. “The Italian model is a fiasco: it is expensive and logistically complicated. But it doesn’t matter, it is political and it has opened a key spigot that others, each in their own way, want to undertake,” says a veteran European source. In fact, the Netherlands wants to explore an even tougher path in Uganda, Denmark is going to send some 300 foreign inmates serving sentences in Danish prisons to a center in Kosovo, and Albania claims that other countries have approached it to imitate Meloni.
The Twenty-Seven have endorsed the breach of the right to asylum in the European Union by justifying its suspension in certain situations this week. Like the current one in Poland. Its prime minister, the conservative Donald Tusk (of the European People’s Party, like Von der Leyen), denounces that Russia and Belarus are using migrants as weapons, sending them to cross the border to destabilize his country and the entire EU in another form of war. hybrid, which was already seen in 2021 on the eastern border and in the Baltics. Tusk had announced days before the suspension of the right to refuge — as Finland did months ago de facto by closing its borders with Russia. The Commission has not reprimanded him and the leaders have supported him.
The list of the model change is lengthened only a few months after the migration pact was approved, a set of rules that must come into force in mid-2026 and that establishes a solidarity-based distribution of asylum seekers among the Member States, a once they have arrived in community territory. Now, Brussels is trying to delve into the formulas to prevent them from arriving – such as agreements with countries denounced for violating human rights, among them Tunisia or Egypt, to send them funds in exchange for controlling their borders and stopping departures – and to facilitate their expulsion once they are in the Union.
Von der Leyen has committed to reviewing, between now and next year, the concept of “designated safe third countries”; those to which asylum seekers can be deported. The intention, explains a diplomatic source, is to draw up a European list that is much broader than what most countries now have with the aim of increasing the number of States to which people can be deported. Not only to their own citizens, but to other asylum seekers. “There are migrants who need protection, we are perfectly aware of this, but it is not necessary that this protection be in Europe, but rather it can be in safe third countries,” launched the president of the European Commission.
“We are undeniably heading towards an erosion of the right to asylum as it has been traditionally understood, potentially even towards its death,” remarks Iole Fontana, professor at the University of Catania and migration expert, who sees a “paradigm shift.” In this way, the political scientist includes agreements with third countries, the “instrumentalization” of the concept of a “safe third country” and the growing tendency to equate asylum seekers with security risks.
What is flying over Brussels, what is being breathed and discussed in several member states, such as Denmark – with a coalition government led by the Social Democrats, but on the hardest wing on immigration issues – is that the right to asylum, included in the Geneva convention of the 1950s and in international and community law, is anachronistic. That it must be reformed.
Nathalie Tocci, director of the Istituto di Affari Internazionali in Rome, believes that, with the debate on externalizing migration policy, the EU is experiencing a kind of “groundhog day.” The issue returns to the table again and again, from the idea of deportation centers (with whatever name) to agreements with non-EU countries, such as the one made with Turkey in 2016. “There is a kind of perseverance in a method that doesn’t seem to work, but since we can’t think of an alternative, because we are not open to recognizing the fact that it is not a problem that can be solved by delegating it to third countries, we keep trying the same thing over and over again,” he says. the expert
Right turn
Tocci frames the drift of current immigration policy in the growing shift to the right on the continent. In the European Parliament, in the Commission, in the European Council. The entire political spectrum has moved to the right, including some social democratic parties, as in Germany, where the immigration debate has hardened and a closure of the borders of the Schengen area has been ordered, in addition to that of a good number of member states. and that, most of the time with the argument of security concerns, can give a final blow to free movement within the community territory. “The Europe of welcome has long disappeared. Let’s think about the hundreds of thousands who have died in the Mediterranean trying to reach the EU… We have been in a hostile Europe for a long time, but now we have seen that the trend is accelerating,” says Tocci.
The extreme right sets the agenda, but the truth is that the vast majority of countries aim to tighten immigration policies in general. “The leaders want to send a message that they have control of the borders, of arrivals; They believe that if not, they will not guarantee the trust of citizens in other matters,” says a high-ranking community source. “There is a clear change in discourse in a debate that is eminently political,” he adds.
A debate led by the hard wing against immigration. Especially the Italian Giorgia Meloni, leader of a party with fascist roots. However, his message is the same—albeit with a different tone—that the national-populist Viktor Orbán has been sending for years. On Thursday, just before the summit, a conclave led by Italy, the Netherlands (with a government coalition led by the far right) and Denmark brought together Austria, Cyprus, Poland, the Czech Republic, Greece and the Italian delegation in Brussels. , Hungary, Malta and Slovakia to talk about immigration. Von der Leyen also participated in that breakfast. The Social Democrats and the Greens questioned the role and drift of the German one. “He is not defending European legislation or putting it into practice,” criticizes Bas Eickhout, co-leader of the Greens.
The immigration hard line, however, is gaining weight throughout the Union. Except for Spain, where President Pedro Sánchez has cried out against the indignity of deportation camps like those in Albania – which at the time was also given as an example by the leader of the Popular Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo -, the countries that have been skeptical about The formula has been done for economic or logistical reasons. This is the case of the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz.
“What is happening not only erodes the right to seek asylum – reduced to a concession, and hostage to the fight against irregular migration – but also fundamentally undermines the values of the EU and its commitment to human rights,” he warns. Iole Fontana.