Brussels, 13 March 2024
Remarks by Vice-President Schinas:
Leaders meeting next week at the European Council will once again have migration on the agenda.
This has been a recurrent theme over the last years and for a reason: migration remains one the most challenging issues and continues to dominate our political agendas and your newspaper headlines. I also don’t see that changing any time soon.
It was the same case when Ylva and I took office four years ago.
But there is one crucial difference now:
we have crossed the Rubicon and solidified a dynamic and common EU approach to migration that many prophesised as impossible.
The political agreement reached on the new EU Pact on migration and asylum is a game-changer. The eleven interlocking laws will ensure a collective approach to better secure our external borders, a fair and more effective system of solidarity and responsibility as well as efficient asylum procedures.
And as Ylva will outline, we will leave no stone unturned in making sure they are effectively and quickly implemented.
Before the summer, we will produce a full, step-by-step implementation plan and support Member States every step of the way – with technical and operational assistance and significant EU funding, including EUR 2 billion earmarked from the MFF review.
But the tectonic shifts that took place over the course of this mandate were not only limited to the success of the Pact.
At the same time as European institutions and Member States have sought to be the architects of this new legal framework, we have also been working hard as firefighters to address a series of new and recurrent challenges.
One of the major innovations in the last years has been to shift focus towards a whole-of-route approach, with a series of Action Plans with tailored measures to address each route.
At the external borders of our Union, we have also put in place put in place the most technologically advanced border management system in the world.
We have taken robust action to limit the space in which ruthless smugglers operate and we have started to build a European culture of returns.
Of course, we still have work to do. The proposals on the Long Term Residence Directive, the Return Directive as well as Smuggling and on attracting skills and talent are not yet concluded. And this will need to be a priority for the next political cycle.
Our paradigm shift on the external dimension of migration also needs to mature further. The EU has come a long way in moving to a more pragmatic and assertive way of ensuring our own interests are reflected in the partnerships we maintain worldwide.
But despite some strong successes already, we are not yet using all of our leverage to best effect – further mobilising tools such as trade policy, development cooperation, and visa policy can prove essential to breathe new life into this track of our work.
These work strands will need to continue. But in the meantime – and I hope that this is the message Europeans will retain when going to the polls come June – the EU has proven that it can and will deliver on migration.
We have turned Europe’s Achilles heel into a success story. The EU today is better equipped and prepared than ever before to deal with the day-to-day management of migration, as well as face exceptional and unexpected challenges.
And we have achieved this not by moving away from our values. But by doubling down on them.
Europe is and will remain a continent of asylum. But we will manage migration in an orderly way, and on our terms.
Remarks by Commissioner Johansson:
The agreement that we reached last December 2023 on the new pact, on migration and asylum was an historic decision. It took us four years to get there to rebuild the necessary trust between the Member States and also together with Parliament and other stakeholders, and I think one of the most important parts we could manage, to get this agreement was to realize that migration, managing migration is not a zero sum game. It’s not about winners or losers. It is not which country will win or which will lose on this specific policy.
What we managed to reach was a situation where all member states realize that without a common agreement on migration, we are all losers. And the biggest losers are actually the migrants themselves. Because then we can’t keep our whole house in order. But when we work together, we are so strong and then we are actually all winners, because we can achieve so much more when we are working together. We have shown that during these four years and it will be very much even more so with the new pact.
What is the most important part that we will achieve with the Pact is on the legislative files – a lot – it’s a really comprehensive one. It covers almost everything.
But it’s important it’s EU legislation so it covers what we can do in the EU. In addition to the pact, we also need to do other things like fighting the smugglers, working with the third countries to manage migration. And to prevent dangerous departures, and to do the protection of refugees and also to invest in legal pathways.
But in the pact, we are strengthening the external borders. Everybody that arrives irregularly to our external borders will be screened and they will be channeled if they are probably not in need of international protection, they will have still access to the asylum procedure but the swifter one, and also with the swifter return decision already at the borders. This is important because we know that time is of the essence. The sooner you get a return decision, the more likely it is that the return actually will be executed.
Second, we also have a streamlining of the return decision together with an asylum decision so we will have swifter returns.
Third, we are closing loopholes that can be abused by asylum seekers. So it’s not possible anymore with a pact to just abscond. And then get yourself another possibility to choose for example where to apply for asylum or to start from scratch again with your procedures.
Fourth, we are better protecting the rights of the asylum applicants, especially the vulnerable ones, and families with children and unaccompanied minors. And this is important that this has been significantly strengthened in the new pact and the last thing I would like to mention is the mandatory solidarity which for the first time ever, and it’s really unprecedented that we have now in the law of the mandatory solidarity that no member states will be left alone. And this is really important. It’s like an insurance. That of course we work together all the time. But if things go in a way that a specific member stays under pressure even in a crisis, other member states will step in significantly to support them.
I want to mention also that we also have other legislative files that are important for migration. One is the proposal I made on the possibility to withdraw the visa free regime with countries. Why is this important? Because last year when we had 380,000 Irregular arrivals to the EU, we had 1.1 million asylum applications. That means that they irregularly arrived migrants only counts for 1/3 of the asylum application.
23% of the asylum applications come from people that arrived here visa free – just one example. So it’s important also to make sure that we have the right people into the asylum process. We also need to look into to the asylum application.
The last thing I would like to say is what also migrate is mentioned is the importance of the external dimension that we work with our partner countries. And I can tell you that I’ve been traveling a lot during these years to third countries and arguing and have also agreements with them on how to manage migration together, and every time they start to say; So you’re coming here to get support and to cooperate on managing migration. But what about your own house? You should put your own house in order.
And now we will put our own house in order and that will have a global impact.
Thank you