On the evening of Tuesday 18 April in Strasbourg, MEPs again debated how to prevent tragedies and deaths of migrants in the Mediterranean Sea and how to show solidarity with frontline countries such as Italy, where the government has just declared a six-month state of emergency to deal with the arrivals.
The debate, secured on Monday 17 April by the S&D group when the EPP group was arguing for a discussion more focused on the issue of the growing flows of illegal arrivals, once again revealed the disagreements between the groups on the concrete responses to the rise in arrivals.
Accused by the S&D group of increasingly siding with far-right groups, on Wednesday 19 April the EPP group managed to get an amendment adopted on funding of anti-migrant fences by the EU budget for 2024 (see related article) before the report was rejected.
For their part, the ECR and ID groups managed to obtain enough signatures to put to the vote on Thursday 20 April the mandates adopted on 28 March in the European Parliament’s Committee on Civil Liberties on the ‘Pact on Migration and Asylum’ (see EUROPE 13151/6) relating to migration and asylum management (RAMM), migrant screening and the crisis management instrument.
This approach should not call into question the mandates approved in the committee, but was not welcomed by Swedish MEP Tomas Tobé (EPP), rapporteur on the RAMM. According to Tobé, it shows that the European far right is “not looking for solutions” and is “abandoning its responsibilities”.
These groups also succeeded in forcing a vote on the directive on the status of third country nationals who are long-term residents (see EUROPE 13151/7).
On Tuesday, most groups reiterated the urgent need for an agreement on the ‘Pact’ and for a common European response, but they did not share the same priorities, with the EPP group insisting on protecting external borders and preventing irregular arrivals by working with Tunisia, said Dutch MEP Jeroen Lenaers. At this rate (more than 30,000 people have arrived in Italy since the beginning of the year), Member States will soon be unable to cope, he added.
The ECR group, on the other hand, brushed aside the possibility (as called for by the S&D group and Italian MEP Pietro Bartolo) of setting up a new major European sea rescue operation modelled on the Italian Mare Nostrum operation of 2013-2014, which was partially replaced by Frontex’s Triton operation.
Speaking for The Left, Spanish MEP Sira Rego criticised European responses that are not so different from the “racist” responses that she says are included in the decree of Giorgia Meloni’s government.
Swedish Minister for EU Affairs Jessika Roswall also stressed the need to “join forces to find common ground” on the ‘Pact’. “We need a system that works internally to be able to manage the external dimension” of migration, she said, acknowledging that the situation in Tunisia “affects us”.
Commissioner Johannes Hahn reiterated that Italy is the country most helped by EU funds, with “more than €2 billion since 2015” in ‘asylum’ and ‘migration’ funds and new urgent aid under consideration.
Noting the state of emergency in the country, he said that Commissioner for Home Affairs Ylva Johansson will visit Tunisia at the end of the month to discuss new partnerships, as Tunisia has overtaken Libya in the number of migrant departures. The aim will be to discuss “alternatives” to these sea crossings.
Such a situation cannot in any case be handled by a Member State “alone”, the commissioner added, calling on the co-legislators to do “their utmost” to adopt the ‘Pact’ under this mandate. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)