The outgoing European Commissioner for Migration, Dimitris Avramopoulos, defended, on Monday 16 September, before the members of the European Parliament's Civil Liberties Committee (LIBE), the summation of the Juncker Commission, which was marked from the outset by terrorism and the migration crisis. He called on the Von der Leyen team not to "start from scratch" on the delicate issue of the reform of the Dublin Regulation.
Not surprisingly, it was the migration issue that dominated his last speech to the LIBE Committee MEPs, with the Commissioner ensuring that in five years the EU has equipped itself with the necessary technical and political tools to prepare for the future. The EU has helped save more than 700,000 lives in the Mediterranean since 2015, frontline countries were actively supported by the Commission, for example with the relocation, which has involved 34,000 people from Greece and Italy, he argued; more than 50,000 people have also been resettled in the EU from non-Member States.
For the next Commission, one of the challenges will be to develop legal migration channels, which are an integral part of a comprehensive migration policy, while the legislature still fails to revise the Blue Card Directive; it will also be necessary to continue to build on cooperation with countries of origin and transit.
While the official did not want to say anything more about the meeting on 23 September in Malta, in which he will participate and whose objective will be to reach an agreement on temporary disembarkation arrangements of migrants, he stressed that the real solution could only be to revise the Dublin Regulation, which will require "trust" between Member States.
"We want to move forward on temporary agreements" and the Commission is ready to provide "operational and financial" support, but these "agreements should be useful until agreement on a new ‘Dublin’" and do not "replace legislation", the Commissioner added. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)