All MEPs, except those on the far right, consider it crucial that vital help be given to the 2,000 migrants still stranded on the Belarus-Poland border, but are still divided over the essential nature of the crisis. For the right, it is a migration crisis and a hybrid attack on the EU; for the left, it is above all a humanitarian crisis.
This division was evident on Tuesday 23 November in the debate on the conclusions of the October European Council and in the debate on the Belarusian crisis (see EUROPE 12830/15).
There was unity on the appropriateness of further sanctions against the Lukashenko regime for its use of migrants for political purposes and on the European Commission’s proposal for a legal framework to allow the EU to impose sanctions on transport company operators complicit in human trafficking (see other news).
EPP group chairman Manfred Weber of Germany said he was “delighted that the EU understands that this is not a migration crisis, but a hybrid war”, and expressed his “support for the border guards who are defending Europe” in this war.
On behalf of the S&D group, Spanish MEP Iratxe García Pérez retorted that “our response to the dictator is not incompatible with respect for the right to asylum”. She also pleaded for Poland to give access to NGOs and journalists and called for “a Europe that breaks down walls, not builds them”.
“5,000 people who have fled war are not a security threat. The threat is politicians who do not respect democracy or international law. And if Lukashenko can weaponise them, it is because of the failed migration policy, a disgrace for the EU”, said Martin Schirdewan, co-chair of The Left
For Ska Keller, co-president of the German Greens/EFA group, “as long as we see human beings as a threat, we will give Lukashenko leverage”.
Of the €700,000 in humanitarian aid announced by the EU, €200,000 has already been mobilised for the Red Cross. In addition, UNHCR and IOM finally have access to a camp on the Belarusian side, stressed Commission Vice-President Margarítis Schinás.
Ryszard Antoni Legutko (ECR, Poland), who said he was speaking on behalf of Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, launched a full-scale attack on “Putin’s Russia, which has restored its imperial power”. He spoke of “a war for the future of the EU, an information conflict, a cyber conflict”, calling for sanctions and increased transatlantic cooperation.
Nicolas Bay (ID, France) refused to see the trapped migrants as victims. “Lukashenko is helping them, but they are the ones who want to come”, he said, denouncing it as an event “staged” to generate pity. According to him, “deporting migrants is to protect weaponised migrants”. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)