Dear readers,
Welcome to EU Politics Decoded where Benjamin Fox and Eleonora Vasques will bring you a round-up of the latest political news in Europe and beyond every Thursday. In this edition, we look at how EU leaders are now promising to get tougher on migrant returns.
Editor’s Take: Europe’s inertia on migrant returns
In the great migration control debate, most headlines tend to focus on the question of burden sharing of migrants and the so-called ‘solidarity mechanism’. The return of those whose asylum claims have been turned down is the poor relation.
Yet a coordinated EU stance on migrant returns would do far more than burden sharing to take the pressure off the national authorities and public services that are bearing the weight of the more than 4 million Ukrainian refugees being hosted across the EU27.
Last year, 924,000 asylum applications were made across the EU, with around 300,000 decisions on applications, and approximately 70,000 people returned to their country of origin. Such numbers point to a set of dysfunctional national immigration authorities that do not communicate with each other.
The low return numbers are nothing new; this is a long-running problem for the EU.
While the EU struck return agreements with North African states such as Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia last year, which are now in the early stages of implementation, it is not the same for states in sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.
In any case, such agreements will only work if they include legal pathways such as work, training and skills programmes that increase safe passage for would-be migrants.
That is part of the reason why Viktor Orbán’s Hungarian government continues to block the ratification of the treaty with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (APC) community. The Cotonou Agreement, which would be succeeded by the new ACP treaty, included provisions on migrant returns that almost all sub-Saharan African states have refused to implement.
In the past, the more hawkish EU governments on migration have mooted the prospect of cutting development aid for countries that do not take migrants back, though this has never gained much traction.
However, there are now signs that the EU is planning to take a tougher approach to returns. The draft conclusions of February’s EU leaders’ summit, seen by EURACTIV, state that “swift action is needed to ensure effective returns from the European Union to countries of origin using as leverage all relevant EU policies, instruments and tools, including development, trade and visas as well as opportunities for legal migration, such as Talent Partnerships.”
Earlier this week, the European Commission said that the EU should agree on a target list of third countries with which it should broker deals on migrant returns.
That is only part of the solution. Many of the problems are in-house and the result of poor or non-existent coordination between EU states.
Last year, Germany, which received the most asylum applications in the EU, applied to fellow European countries to take back 68,709 people, but the majority of these applications failed.
Meanwhile, the number of those applying for asylum in Germany who had already begun a procedure in another EU country increased by 62.5% in 2022 compared to 2021. If EU governments cannot communicate with each other it is a stretch to imagine that countries of origin will do their job for them.
Politics in the Spotlight
Have a look at our exclusive video interview with ex-Italian Prime Minister and current President of the Five Star Movement, Giuseppe Conte. The discussion covered the war in Ukraine, Italian energy policy, Qatargate, and EU elections.
Who’s electioneering?
Retired general Petr Pavel is the heavy favourite as Czechs prepare to vote for the second round of Presidential elections this weekend, holding a 15-point lead over billionaire ex-premier Andrej Babis.
A Czech Television poll puts Pavel at 53% compared to 38% for Babis with 9% undecided on a turnout of over 80%, the highest in the country’s history.
Capitals-in-brief
French unemployment levels reach 11-year low. The number of job-seekers in France dropped by 3.6% in the last quarter of 2022 to 3.05 million, the lowest figure since 2011 but the French Central Bank warned that the unemployment rate might increase again in 2023.
German government forecasts minimal growth for 2023. The German economy, which grew by 1.8% in 2022, is expected to only grow 0.2%, according to a government forecast presented by Economy Minister Robert Habeck.
State of the Rock. Officials from the UK, Gibraltar and the European Commission will meet on Thursday and Friday, in the latest attempt to break the deadlock on the status of the Rock, a former naval base, at the southern tip of Spain.
Catalonia hit by mass worker protests. Thousands of doctors, nurses, teachers and taxi drivers took to the streets of Barcelona and other major Catalan cities on Wednesday, pointing out their poor working conditions and low wages.
Inside the institutions
Weber makes his move. European Parliament chief Roberta Metsola and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen can be both good Spitzencandidaten, European People’s Party President Manfred Weber said on Thursday (26 January). With elections in Spring 2024 it is early to be talking about this but Weber is clearly willing to fuel the debate.
Iran sanctioned MEPs. The Iranian government announced sanctions for a wide range of EU, national politicians, and personalities, including some EU lawmakers from different political groups. The sanctioned MEPs include Dutch Thijs Reuten from the S&D, the Dutch MEP Bart Groothuis and the Swedish Abir Al-Sahlani from Renew, Italy’s Anna Bonfrisco from ID, and the Austrian Lukas Mandl from the EPP.
Citizen-backed petition to ban pesticides by 2035 divides EU lawmakers. A petition led by citizens and NGOs calling for a ban on synthetic pesticides left a bittersweet taste after being delivered to the European Parliament in a ‘lively panel’ joined by the Commission, agriculture and environment lawmakers.
Brussels interpreters unionise for fair pay, better working conditions. Freelance interpreters in Belgium are organising in a bid to demand fair pay and improved working conditions against language service providers, building on the new European Commission’s guidelines, which allow individual self-employed workers to organise and negotiate collectively.
What we are reading
Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the mercenary group Wagner, may be Putin’s greatest threat to power, writes Mikhail Zygar for The New York Times
Why EU cloud infrastructure mustn’t be monopolised by a couple of legacy software gatekeepers, writes Mogens Peter Carl for Euronews
‘What happened to the non-Ukrainian refugees from Ukraine?’ writes Katharine Woolrych and Nataliia Krynytska for the EU Observer
Britain is not doomed, says Tom McTague in Unherd
The next week in politics
The Council starts with a meeting of Agriculture and Fisheries ministers and is followed by an EU-Ukraine summit on Friday. EU Commissioners have their College meeting on 1 February.
Elsewhere, it’s a busy week at the European Parliament again, with political groups and committee meetings as well as again a mini-plenary session in Brussels on Wednesday and Thursday.
Thanks for reading. If you’d like to contact us for leaks, tips or comments, drop us a line at [email protected] / [email protected] or contact us on Twitter: @EleonorasVasques & @benfox83
[Edited by Nathalie Weatherald]
Source: euractiv.com
