Number of EU countries in favor of immigration restrictions rises and threatens pact of 27
Although the agreement surrounding the new migration pact, negotiated for almost a decade, was reached just a few months ago, and it already provides for a tightening of rules, particularly in terms of border control and repatriation, there are already several countries that defend its review to make the entry of migrants even more difficult. This summer, Berlin and Paris joined the group of capitals that defend a more security approach.
If before there were only ‘small’ countries with more authoritarian regimes, such as Hungary and Slovakia, advocating a ‘heavy-handed’ migration policy – which Italy has joined since the election, around two years ago, of a government of right and extreme right led by Giorgia Meloni – there are now several national governments that defend a tightening of the rules, in a context of worsening conflicts on a global scale and the consequent increase in refugee flows, and the rise of extreme right parties who make the fight against immigration their greatest ‘flag’.
These countries are joined, in an increasingly ‘hard’ line, by the Netherlands and Sweden, and there are also more and more supporters of agreements with third countries to outsource asylum procedures, with the agreement established increasingly being cited as an example between Italy and Albania for the creation of two reception centers on Albanian territory to be managed by the Italian authorities (although these are late in being operational).
Berlin and Paris, two capitals that until recently defended fair, humanist and coordinated migration policies, radically changed their discourse, even questioning the rules of Schengen, the area of free movement of people, which they now consider too free.
The German government presented, around two weeks ago, a package of measures with a “clear response to security problems”, as highlighted by the Minister of the Interior, Nancy Faeser. The decision clearly comes as a response to the terrorist attack in Solingen, which killed three people and was claimed by the Islamic State (IS), and to the rise of the extreme right in the country.
The executive’s plan led by socialist Olaf Scholz, which aims to ease internal pressure to stop illegal immigration, includes security measures, restrictions on services for asylum seekers and measures to facilitate the expulsion of migrants.
The establishment of new border controls with Belgium, Denmark, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, since September 16th, in addition to those already existing with Poland, the Czech Republic, Switzerland and Austria, has been the most controversial change.
“As the Federal Government, we are doing what is necessary and legally possible to ensure the safety of people in Germany. We are expanding the instruments of our defense-oriented democracy in order to prevent, resolve and sanction criminal offences,” Faeser pointed out.
Furthermore, the minister guarantees that authorities will now have “an easier time keeping weapons out of the hands of extremists, terrorists and criminals or removing them, also improving the exchange of information between the agencies involved.”
Asylum seekers will lose state protection if they go on holiday to their home country, for example, with some exceptions. They will also no longer have Government recognition if they are convicted of serious crimes, such as anti-Semitism, racism, homophobia or misogyny. Furthermore, the Government’s initiative seeks to speed up the expulsion of asylum seekers who are in Germany and whose initial entry was registered in another European Union (EU) country, in accordance with the Dublin Convention. “Whoever receives our protection must not abuse it, otherwise they will have to leave our country,” said the German Interior Minister.
France appears to be following the same line, now under a right-wing government led by Michel Barnier, which has already expressed its desire to reopen negotiations on the European Pact for Migration and adopt a more rigorous stance on migration, following the example of the ‘neighbors’ Germany and the Netherlands. “We have to review EU legislation that is no longer adapted. I am thinking, first of all, of the ‘return’ directive. It is time to change EU rules”, recently defended the new Minister of the Interior, Bruno Retailleau.
Paris also says it understands the decision of some EU countries to reintroduce border controls in the Schengen area, and, by the way, Barnier noted that several socialist governments are heading in that direction, giving Germany, Denmark and the United Kingdom as an example.
“We are seeing what a socialist chancellor is doing [em matéria de controlos fronteiriços]what a socialist minister is doing in Denmark, what a socialist prime minister is doing in the United Kingdom, this should be a warning sign for us”, said Michel Barnier.
No longer part of the community bloc, the United Kingdom is another ‘case study’ in the current context, since, elected last July, the new British Prime Minister, the Labor leader (left) Keir Starmer, who rejected the plan of the previous British conservative government to expel migrants to Rwanda, he has now become an enthusiast of Meloni’s Italian model.
After being faced with the biggest riots in the United Kingdom since 2011, which targeted mosques and migrant hostels across the country, Starmer now admits to replicating the Italian ‘model’, having traveled to Rome less than two weeks ago to understand which he classified as Italy’s “remarkable progress” in combating illegal immigration, stating that he agrees with “new solutions” to also be applied in the United Kingdom.
Starmer admitted that he was particularly interested in the agreements established by the Meloni Government with the authorities of Libya and Tunisia, to reduce the number of departures from these two Maghreb countries, but the controversial agreement established in November last year between Rome and Tirana with a view to creating two migrant centers in Albania.
Among the EU member states that already have stricter policies, and in addition to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary – which has long been critical of European migration policy – we currently include Sweden, with a conservative government supported by the extreme right, and the Netherlands, with a Government dominated by the extreme right of Geert Wilders.
In Sweden, which has traditionally received a large number of immigrants since the 1990s, mainly from regions ravaged by conflict – including the former Yugoslavia, Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iran and Iraq – the new policy to combat immigration decreed by the conservative leader Ulf Kristersson — who came to power in October 2022, forming a majority bloc with the support of the nationalist Swedish Democrats party — is already “bearing fruit”, as the Government itself recently announced.
Last August, Stockholm announced that the number of people leaving Sweden is expected to surpass the number of immigrants in 2024, which is happening for the first time in more than half a century. At the same time, asylum applications continue to decline and have reached their lowest level since 1997.
Also in another Scandinavian country famous until a few years ago for its policy of welcoming migrants, Denmark, the policy has changed radically in recent years, with the current socialist Government increasingly using the terms “self-sufficiency and return” instead of “integration”. , as Danish public opinion increasingly spoke out against the large number of migrants in the country and the far right could capitalize on this discontent.
In the Netherlands, the Government, which came to power in July, announced last week the action program for 2025, which includes stricter policies to retain or expel migrants who do not meet the necessary conditions to obtain asylum, in what constitutes a radical reform of the country’s asylum system, and which even provides for an option to “opt out” of EU migration policies.
And it is in this scenario of a growing number of Member States advocating more restrictive migration policies – and with conflicts such as the war in Ukraine and the Middle East ‘at the doorstep’ of Europe – that the new legislature at EU level begins following the elections last June, which threatens to be marked by the community bloc’s new response to challenges in terms of migration and asylum.
