Repatriation deals with third countries are the game changer that will help EU countries reduce the number of migrants, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz claimed on Thursday while hitting out at right-wing leaders who “claim they can expel migrants with tough talk”.
Reducing irregular migration will be a key topic for Scholz and his EU counterparts at next week’s leaders summit, as member states wrestle with a surge in arrivals at the Mediterranean coast.
“There are politicians in many countries of the world who try to distinguish themselves by claiming that migrants can be expelled with tough talk,“ Scholz told MPs in a thinly veiled dig at Rishi Sunak and Giorgia Meloni (FdI/ECR), the right-wing prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Italy.
The two leaders had published a joint op-ed in The Times ahead of the European Political Community (EPC) meeting in Granada two weeks ago, “calling on others to act with the same urgency” as they do to stop migrants and human traffickers.
Despite vocal promises to be tough on migration, both suffered a blow this year as statistics indicate that the number of migrant arrivals increased on their watch.
“It’s often those politicians [who talk tough] that oversee rising numbers of asylum claims and fail because they don’t find a way to collaborate with countries of origins and transit countries,” Scholz pointed out.
Migration deals with third countries would make the “crucial difference compared to past efforts” to reduce migration, the chancellor promised, arguing that Germany could now offer more incentives in return for countries taking back migrants, for example, more visas for skilled workers thanks to immigration reforms.
German diplomats were currently working on six such deals, he revealed.
However, recent EU efforts to strike collaboration agreements on migration with third countries have backfired. A deal with Tunisia, agreed earlier this year, is hanging by a thread.
The northern African country returned financial support linked to the deal in response to criticism from Brussels that the country was not properly implementing the agreement.
The increasing pressure from irregular migration is yet only one of many crises the EU heads of state and government will have to deal with at the upcoming summit.
(Nick Alipour | Euractiv.de)
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Source: euractiv.com
