The EU interior ministers agreed, on Friday 25 November in Brussels, to implement the 20 actions proposed on 21 November by the European Commission to manage the migration situation in the Central Mediterranean and committed to making progress on the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’ at their formal meeting on 8 December.
They also recalled the need to address other routes, such as the Western Balkans, which is experiencing a sharp increase in arrivals and will also be the subject of a new Commission action plan in the coming days.
The meeting, convened after the dispute between Paris and Rome over the reception of the 234 migrants rescued at sea at the end of October by the ship Ocean Viking, allowed the ministers to agree on the search for a more predictable European framework for these search and rescue operations at sea.
They thus accepted to be part of the contact group created by the new ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’. All the countries are therefore expected to meet around a table with representatives of NGOs in particular to begin a reflection, although no date has yet been set for this next contact group.
The Commission also believes that rescue operations carried out by NGOs may need a “set of rules”, as requested by Paris and Rome, said Commission Vice-President Margarítis Schinás. And “talking about this with NGOs should not be taboo”, he added.
“Operations in the Mediterranean and elsewhere cannot operate under a Wild, Wild West situation”, the vice-president stated, “a certain order” is needed in these operations, with a framework of cooperation and anticipation between the member states to avoid situations like the Ocean Viking.
The contact group will be the starting point for these discussions, the vice-president added. Then “it will be a matter of deciding on the form”, he continued, which could be one of a code of conduct.
For his part, the Czech Minister of the Interior, Vít Rakušan, noted the positive atmosphere in the room and the willingness of all Member States to find “short-term and long-term” solutions, including the successful reform of the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’ and continuing to work on various aspects with third countries to prevent departures, from financial assistance to cooperation on returns.
The minister also recalled that the instrumentalisation of migration continues to be a reality for some Member States. The Czech Presidency of the Council of the EU, which summarised all these discussions in a document on Friday, hopes to be able to reach an agreement on the ‘instrumentalisation’ regulation.
Paris will not yet resume relocations from Italy
The French Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, was in any case pleased with this meeting, which enabled progress to be made on a solution to “better supervise the action of NGOs, by specifying the rights and obligations that apply to ships carrying out rescue operations and by setting up a framework for cooperation between Mediterranean States”.
However, the French minister said that the relocations of 3,500 migrants from Italy, promised under the voluntary solidarity mechanism activated in June, will only resume when this framework is in place.
“We need to get out of a situation where the same states are called upon to receive ships and carry out relocations from other Member States” and relocations will only resume “when this is the case”, he said.
Increase of arrivals in the EU
According to the latest data from Frontex, in the first ten months of this year 281,000 irregular entries were detected at the EU’s external borders, an increase of 77% compared to the same period last year. This is the highest figure since 2016. The Western Balkans route to the EU remains the most active, with over 22,300 detections in October, almost three times more than a year ago.
The Central Mediterranean migration route saw a 59% increase in the number of irregular border crossings detected between January and October, reaching over 85,000 crossings, making it the second most active migration route to the EU.
It should be noted that the number of irregular migrants detected in the Channel amounted to 62,000, which represents an increase of 70% compared to the same period in 2021, Frontex also indicates.
Link to the summary of the meeting: https://aeur.eu/f/4b4 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)