Two weeks after tensions between Italy and France about the 234 passengers of the humanitarian ship, the twenty-seven meet to better coordinate the management of irregular entries in the EU, in very high rise from the start of the year.
by Allan Kaval (Rome, correspondent) and Philippe Jacqué (Brussels, European office)
Send a message of unity of Europe and definitively close a disastrous sequence of disunity on the migratory issue. This is the issue of the extraordinary council of the interior ministers of the twenty-seven which meets Friday, November 25. He intervenes two weeks after the major diplomatic crisis between France and Italy regarding the reception of the Ocean-Viking and its 234 passengers. A crisis which however allowed the new far -right government of Giorgia Meloni to bring the subject back to the top of the continent’s political agenda.
Since the beginning of 2022, nearly 280,000 irregular arrivals have been recorded in Europe, according to the Fronttex border and coast guard agency. While around three million people regularly enter the continent each year, the phenomenon remains measured and far from the years 2015 and 2016, when more than a million migrants arrived there irregularly.
Despite this, on certain migratory routes, growth rates are raised, after two years of drop in entries, linked in particular to COVVI-19. In the south, nearly 90,000 people – an increase up of 59 % – braved the flowers of the Mediterranean to reach the European coasts, while 130,000 took the way to the Balkans – an increase of 168 % on a An.
In this context, all the member states of the European Union (EU) wish to relaunch discussions. “Whether it is Belgium, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, the countries of Central European and even the Baltic countries, all are now concerned by this question, notes a diplomat to diplomat Brussels. It becomes necessary to find a lasting European solution. “And there is no question of remaining in the sole subject of the Mediterranean way, which interests Italy. “You have to take advantage of the moment to start a political dynamic in order to reach, finally, on the asylum and migration pact”, judges a European official. This pact, unveiled in 2020 and which brings together a dozen legislative texts, has been enlarged for two years both to the Council and in the Parliament.
Monday, the Commission published an action plan of around twenty measures, largely inspired by its pact, in order to prepare the meeting of interior ministers. If the community executive has recalled many times to Italy that it should respect international law and welcome passengers saved at sea, it gives wages to Rome and, more broadly, to the supporters of an ever more policy farm against irregular immigration in Europe. “The climate is today to harden these subjects throughout Europe,” observes Damien Lent, an ecological MEP specializing in the subject.
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