Migrants entering the EU illegally should know that they will never be regularised, Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s far-right Vox party, said on Thursday, while pointing to the Italian-Albanian migrant outsourcing model as an interesting alternative to ease the current crisis.
After a meeting of the parties that make up the Patriots for Europe group, including Vox, its leader told the press in Brussels about his thoughts on migration.
“And that is exactly what neither the Partido Popular (EPP) nor the PSOE (S&D) are doing at the moment, they are doing the opposite. They (some EU leaders) are looking for solutions to bring illegal entrants to some places. We don’t think it is wrong to explore it, but for us, it is much more important to go to the root. It is to send the message that whoever enters this territory illegally will never have a future here,” said Abascal, EFE reported.
Vox is currently the third-largest force in the Spanish parliament, with 33 seats. The far-right party governs alongside the PP in several municipalities and regions.
The Rome-Tirana ‘experiment’ officially kicked off on Wednesday, although it has been mired in controversy from the outset. Of the first group of 16 migrants sent to Albania, two were minors, and the other two were in extremely vulnerable conditions and had to be returned to Italy.
The model sees males aged over 18 who have been rescued from international waters by Italian vessels and sent to the Italian-run centres in Albania for application processing. Once a decision is made, they will return to their home country or Italy.
Many NGOs across Europe, including Amnesty International, have strongly criticised Meloni’s (Fratelli d’Italia/ECR) initiative, and among EU leaders, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (PSOE/S&D) has been the most vocal in his opposition.
In his comments to the press, Abascal also lamented that the Partido Popular and the PSOE, with their apparently divergent migration policies, indirectly promoted what he described as an undesirable pull effect.
“The only difference between Partido Popular and the PSOE in Spain at the moment is that some want to regularise 500,000 illegal (immigrants) in one fell swoop, and others want to regularise 700,000 illegal immigrants. In other words, they are promoting the ‘pull effect’ in an absolutely brutal way,” said Abascal.
Some left-wing forces harden their tone on migration
On Wednesday, PP sources said that Spain should move in the same direction as the EU on migration policy, implying that the centre-right party backed European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen when she said the same day that the EU should ‘explore’ the Italian-Albanian scheme.
In this regard, Abascal recalled that the migrant crisis, which has mainly affected the countries of southern Europe, and which has hit the Canary Islands particularly hard since last summer, has prompted many left-wing forces to toughen up their discourse.
“Even the most internationalist leaders of the European People’s Party, such as (Polish Prime Minister) Donald Tusk, have gone so far as to propose suspending the right of asylum,” Abascal recalled.
“Some (European leaders), as soon as they govern, even some social democrats, are seeing how they need to make a much tougher immigration policy,” the Vox leader added.
“The most important thing is that (irregular immigrants) stop coming (…) whoever enters Europe illegally can never be regularised,” he also said.
(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)
Source: euractiv.com
