On Thursday 21 March, the candidate of the European Socialist family, Nicolas Schmit, criticised the agreements that the European Union is signing with Tunisia (see EUROPE 13373/6) and Egypt (see EUROPE 13318/19), which provide for the outsourcing of the management of migration without any guarantee, in his view, that the fundamental rights of migrants will be respected.
“I am very critical of all kinds of deals with authoritarian regimes, be it Tunisia, be it in Egypt, which consist of saying: ‘We pay and you take care of it’. This is not acceptable, because we have no guarantee that these people’s fundamental rights will be respected”, he declared in Brussels at the Editored congress of European and Latin-European publishers, which Agence Europe is part of.
And he asks: “What happens next? Either they die in the sea, or they die in the desert. This is unacceptable to us”.
The European Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs has acknowledged the importance of “better controlling” migration, a “toxic” issue that the far right has managed to impose on the political scene, in particular to prevent traffickers from thriving. He believes that the ‘Asylum and Migration Pact’, which will be approved by the European Parliament in April (see EUROPE 13318/1), will contribute to better management of migratory flows.
At the same time, he argued, migration represents an economic necessity for the EU. “Even Ms Meloni and Mr Orbán know that they need migration because they have a shortage of labour”, he stressed, convinced of the importance of opening up legal channels for migration. (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)