On Friday 5 May, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, mounted a further attack on the lack of solidarity shown by the countries of Central Europe towards the Mediterranean countries by refusing to relocate refugees currently in Italy and Greece on their territory.
“In Europe, solidarity is conspicuous by its absence”, Juncker said in Florence (our translation throughout), at the seventh annual State of the Union conference, hosted by the European University Institute. “As Europe is missing, Italy is saving Europe’s honour”, he added, in reference to the continuous rescue operations of migrants carried out by the Italian authorities in the central Mediterranean.
The Commission President, who chose to speak in French because - he said - “slowly but surely, English is losing its influence”, said that European legislation anticipated relocating refugees already present in Greece and Italy throughout the EU. Hungary and Poland are stubbornly refusing to comply with this obligation.
“If we do not respect the legal standard, we are doomed to failure”, Juncker told an enraptured audience. The countries in question must think again because they cannot tell the Mediterranean countries that “it’s your problem, we don’t want to let in people we don’t like because of their colour, provenance or religion”. To say such a thing is to be “seriously mistaken about the nature of Europe”, he said.
The Commission could open infringement proceedings against countries reluctant to relocate refugees, but it has not done so for fear of scuppering negotiations underway between member states on the reform of the so-called ‘Dublin’ asylum system (see EUROPE 11767).
The Italian Foreign Minister, Angelino Alfano, said that the Italians were proud to have saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the Mediterranean. “This puts Italy and Europe on the right side of history”, he said.
The President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, said that an exhaustive European strategy to tackle the root causes of the migration phenomenon was vital, for instance, boosting economic growth in Africa. He referred to a Parliament initiative to discuss the matter over two days in order to put pressure on the member states. Migration will be on the agenda of the discussions of Tuesday 16 May with the President of the Commission of the African Union, Moussa Faki, and the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres.
Calls for an increased integration policy
Juncker lamented that the Europeans are “the only ones” not to appreciate the successes of Europe, which has been capable of uniting over a “tortured” continent. “The further away you are from Europe, the more you admire it”, he observed.
Among Europe’s successes, he referred to the single market and the euro, “which protect us from external shocks”. However, contrary to what the UK, which is turning its back on the EU, thinks, “Europe is more than just an enormous market”, the Commission President said.
As for those calling for a return to national borders, they could not be more wrong, Juncker said, just days away from the French presidential elections. Partly because Europe is the most “crowded” continent, its economic influence is declining (its share of global GDP will fall from 25% to 15% over the next 10 years), and its demography is “failing”.
However, Juncker did not deny that Europe, which is facing multiple crises, should focus on the essential (tackling climate change, the digital agenda, external trade, defence) and listen to its citizens’ dissatisfaction, for instance by developing a proper social dimension. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)