It is in a particular context that the Commission presented, on 29 September, its new 2021-2025 Action Plan against migrant smuggling and trafficking networks, in this case in the context of continuous arrivals of migrants for several months in Lithuania, Poland and Latvia, with the help of Belarus.
The new Action Plan against smugglers “puts a very special emphasis” on the “instrumentalisation” of migrants for political purposes, explained Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson and European Vice President for Lifestyle, Margarítis Schinás.
Denouncing “attempts to destabilise the EU” by the Belarusian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, they announced the same day that they had proposed to the Member States the partial suspension of the agreement with Belarus on visa facilitation for those close to the regime.
Thus, they, and not the whole population, will not be able to benefit from the flexibilities granted to the country in July 2020 when the EU-Belarus readmission agreement also entered into force – an agreement that Minsk decided to suspend at the end of June.
The effect of this partial suspension will be to maintain the requirement to provide additional documentary evidence and a high fee for processing visa applications.
In the immediate future, Commissioner Ylva Johansson will also visit Poland on Thursday 30 September to see the situation at the border. She is expected to meet with Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński, to whom she will plead for the intervention of the Frontex agency “which would be a very good idea”, she explained, as the Polish borders are “European borders”.
The Commissioner intends to have a very open discussion with the Minister as NGOs question the attitude of Polish border guards. The country must act “in accordance with the European acquis”, the Commissioner said, suggesting that the head of the Frontex agency could also visit the country. Warsaw has not requested any Frontex intervention at this stage, unlike Lithuania (108 Frontex officers are on site) and Latvia (8 officers).
Action plans with third countries
Regardless of the events in Belarus, which should also encourage Member States to use the new EU instrument on sanctions in relation to human rights violations when faced with such attempts at instrumentalisation, the Action Plan attempts to address a trafficking phenomenon that is constantly adapting.
According to the Commission, 90% of migrants arriving irregularly in the EU use networks of smugglers, whom they can sometimes pay “€10,000” for a journey.
The restrictive measures taken against the pandemic “have made the smuggling of migrants more complex, leading to greater involvement of criminal networks, higher prices and ultimately greater profits”, the Commission adds.
In the first half of 2021, illegal border crossings also increased by 59% compared to the same period in 2020. “It is clear that migrant smugglers have adapted quickly to the new circumstances: after an initial slowdown in March and April 2020, activities have quickly resumed”, the report says.
The Commission therefore intends to remedy this by establishing “operational partnerships” with third countries to combat the smuggling of migrants.
“Actions will aim to strengthen legal, policy, operational and strategic frameworks in partner countries and increase the impact, ownership and sustainability of efforts to combat migrant smuggling”.
“It will be essential to support partner countries as well as regional and continental organisations in data collection, analysis and research”, the Plan adds, and to strengthen “the operational capacity of national and local authorities in partner countries to prevent and deter irregular migration”, for example, by establishing specialised coordination centres.
The Plan also aims to support the capacity of third countries to assist vulnerable persons wishing to leave or to strengthen cooperation with them on identity and document fraud.
At the strictly European level, the Commission also proposes to strengthen judicial cooperation or the monitoring, for example by Frontex, of social networks, in order to detect the activities of smugglers. It also wants to know whether the directive on the facilitation of irregular migration is being properly implemented and has given guidelines to Member States, reminding them that they should not criminalise NGOs or anyone helping migrants on humanitarian grounds.
The Commission also questions the effectiveness of the directive on sanctions against employers of illegal immigrants and calls on Member States to improve its implementation, given that 17% of European employment is said to be with illegal immigrants. “That’s a lot”, the Commissioner reacted, noting that the phenomenon mainly affects construction, personal assistance or agriculture.
The Shadow of the Pact
This Action Plan was cautiously welcomed in the European Parliament, particularly in the EPP, which recalled in a press release that it is above all the absence of an agreement on the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’ that makes the Union vulnerable and susceptible to “blackmail” by other third countries.
The group expects the Member States to “take their responsibilities and move towards a compromise, possibly by qualified majority voting”.
Mr Schinás and Ms Johansson also considered that all the answers to the current problems were to be found in the Pact. “If we are better equipped than in 2015”, Schinás said, “we cannot wait any longer to equip ourselves with a European framework”.
For the S&D group, the action plan against smugglers will be most useful if it really tackles one of the priority factors of migrant smuggling, namely the weakness or absence of legal channels for migration to the EU.
Link to the Action Plan: https://bit.ly/2ZMaxrn
Link to the Communication on employer sanctions: https://bit.ly/2YbcMnl Original version in French by (Solenn Paulic)