European leaders will be discussing migration at their dinner on Thursday 29 June, and are expected to focus in particular on the external dimension of migration and the possibility of increasing the number of partnerships with third countries, such as the one proposed by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to Tunisia on 11 June.
Although this partnership, based in particular on a €105 million envelope to help Tunisia prevent migrants from leaving for the EU, is still being negotiated (see EUROPE 13199/15) - the Tunisian government having asked the EU for “more time” to study the terms of the agreement, according to a European diplomat - the EU27 will, on Thursday evening, consider how to draw inspiration from this model, which could possibly be reused for Egypt.
Some Member States are also expected to come up with new ways of managing migration, with a group of nine Member States led by Denmark aiming to put forward some “creative ideas”, according to a diplomatic source. “But not everyone supports them”, the source added.
Among the ideas put forward by this group of countries are solutions for externalising the management of migration and the creation of partnerships with third countries along the lines of the agreement with Turkey, which has been taking back asylum seekers from Greece since 2016.
“A very large majority of Member States say that everything we do must comply with international law. Most of the ideas we have seen so far on the externalisation were, in my opinion, either incompatible with international law, or on the borderline of international law”, commented another diplomat.
“Everything we do with Tunisia is already creative”, said another source, hoping that the agreement with Tunisia on a Memorandum of Understanding could be concluded “within the next 10 days”.
Although, in principle, the internal aspects of migration are not on the agenda for this discussion, Hungary and Poland have already announced that they will be complaining on Thursday evening about the recent use of qualified majority voting for decisions on the Pact on Migration and Asylum’, namely the decisions taken on 8 June by the interior ministers on two key texts of the Pact (see EUROPE 13197/1).
The discussion could then take on a whole new dimension, with one diplomatic source wondering whether these two countries would be prepared, for example, to “block the conclusions” of the Summit to express their dissatisfaction.
With regard to recent events and the shipwrecks of migrants at sea, the European Council is expected to reiterate its emotion at the loss of human life, but is not expected to discuss search and rescue operations at sea in depth, a particularly “controversial” subject, stressed a diplomat.
Link to the draft conclusions: https://aeur.eu/f/7s3 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic with the editorial staff)