On all four sides, Europe is toughening its migration policies and shielding itself from arrivals. A few days ago, the European Union gave its final approval to the migration pact, which restricts the reception conditions for asylum seekers and speeds up deportations. And along the way, the community club has woven a series of pacts with countries of origin and transit, such as Tunisia or Egypt, which it pays to avoid departures to Europe, leaving aside concerns about human rights violations. of the schemes to which it sends those funds. Now, after months of debate, the United Kingdom has given the green light to the controversial law that allows the deportation of migrants in an irregular situation to Rwanda thanks to an agreement with the Government of the African country – which goes one step further than those of the EU-; a measure that, without the scope of the British standard, has inspired other initiatives, such as that of Italy to build reception and management centers for asylum seekers in Albania.
The evidence shows that immigration is also necessary for Europe, an aging continent, and for countries that cannot fill their job vacancies in various sectors. In 2023, 385,445 migrants in an irregular situation arrived in the community territory, according to data from the EU border agency, Frontex; far from the almost two million in 2015, in the midst of the refugee crisis derived from the Syrian war. However, despite the figures, the issue is one of the most divisive in national and community politics, an electoral breeding ground and a link between the extreme right and populism, very diverse tides that coincide in their anti-immigration discourse.
The rise of the extreme right is also pushing many governments – especially the traditional conservatives – to harden their stance with measures that are highly questioned from the point of view of human rights conventions. Brussels is now designing other migration agreements such as the one it has signed with Egypt, Tunisia or Mauritania and wants to add other countries such as Morocco.
This Tuesday, the Council of Europe, which brings together 46 countries, including the United Kingdom – which left the EU in 2020, after a campaign, the Brexit campaign, very focused on immigration – has shown its concern about the law of Rwanda, especially for implementing a policy of expulsion to that country without the British authorities having first evaluated individual asylum applications. “The bill prevents people facing deportation to Rwanda from accessing remedies for possible violations of the absolute prohibition of refoulement,” warned Michael O’Flaherty, Commissioner for Human Rights at the Council of Europe.
“Dubious agreements” with non-EU countries
Stephanie Pope, an expert from the NGO Oxfam, points out that the EU is turning to the right on migration issues and believes that the latest policies, including the migration pact, are a reaction to the rise of the extreme right. “They have bowed to them and now we have a system based on deterrence, detention and deportation,” she says. “The EU is increasingly reliant on striking dubious deals with non-EU countries, paying them to prevent people from reaching the EU, seemingly at any human cost. The Rwanda agreement flagrantly violates international, European and EU law and cannot become the model for EU asylum policy,” adds Pope.
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Examples of this hardening of posture accumulate. In Italy, the coalition of the far-right Giorgia Meloni took over the Government with promises to take a tough line on immigration and to stop arrivals through the Mediterranean. In Sweden, the conservative Prime Minister, Ulf Kristersson, assured upon coming to power at the end of 2022 that immigration in the Nordic country is “unsustainable.” France, where Marine Le Pen’s ultra-National Rally party is surging in the polls ahead of June’s European elections, has tightened its laws. The coalition government in Germany has also done so, where the ultras of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) put pressure with xenophobic and anti-immigrant discourse. In the Netherlands, the coalition government led by Mark Rutte resigned in July 2023 over a disagreement over asylum policies. And in Denmark, the government led by social democrat Mette Frederiksen has approved some of the most restrictive measures on immigration from across the continent and also plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. In addition, several European countries have imposed border closures even though they are part of the Schengen area.
In many of these cases, it has been conservative governments that have changed their measures. This has also been done by the European People’s Party – to which the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, belongs -, which in its manifesto approved in March proposes tough measures on immigration and plans to deport asylum seekers in the style of the model British, a crucial change, in another reaction to the far right.
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