On Monday 4 July in the evening, MEPs returned to the events in Melilla, the Spanish enclave in Morocco, where 23 migrants (37, according to other counts) died on 24 June after trying to enter Spanish territory.
Pushed back by Moroccan border guards, some of the 2,500 migrants who tried to enter Spain - many of whom came from Sudan or Chad - are now being tried this week in Morocco.
Addressing the Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, the MEPs took turns to criticise a European migration policy that does not offer enough legal migration channels, or even, for some, a “racist” European policy “conditioned by skin colour”, as denounced by Spain’s Sira Rego (The Left), referring to the difference in attitude of Europeans with Ukrainian refugees. Other voices on the far right blamed the EU’s “pro-migration” discourse for the tragedy, as it made people believe that the EU can take in everyone, as Hungarian Fidesz Balázs Hidvéghi (NI) said.
The Commissioner refuted the “racist” nature of EU policy and denounced both “unacceptable” deaths at the EU’s external borders and “unacceptable” attempts by migrants to force their way in.
She also supported, like many MEPs, the calls for independent investigations launched by the UNHCR and, as far as the European aspect is concerned, recalled that the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’, as well as the work on migration partnerships with countries of origin and transit and the fight against smugglers, were the only possible response to these tragedies. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)