On Sunday 7 April in Athens, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, warned against “Putin’s friends” within the European Union, those “populists and demagogues” who, she says, are trying to rewrite the history of Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine.
“Whether it is the AfD in Germany, the Rassemblement National in France, the Confederatia in Poland or others, the names may be different, but the goal is the same: they are trampling on our values and they want to destroy our Europe”, declared the candidate of the European People’s Party (EPP) at the congress of Nea Demokratia, the party of the Greek Prime Minister, Kyriákos Mitsotákis. “We will never let this happen”, she promised.
On migration management, the German Christian Democrat felt that the EU was fulfilling its international obligations, notably with the adoption of the Pact on Migration and Asylum, which is currently being finalised. “It is us, Europeans, who decide who comes to Europe and under what circumstances. And not the smugglers”, she said.
In its manifesto for the European elections in June, the EPP puts forward the concept of a ‘safe third country’, whereby an asylum seeker in the EU would be transferred to a safe third country with which the EU has a specific agreement so that they can obtain asylum and settle there “in a civilised and safe way”, in accordance with the Geneva Convention for Refugees, instead of entering the EU (see EUROPE 13366/1, 13365/10).
Ms von der Leyen also praised the economic upturn in Greece since the end of the third Greek rescue plan in the summer of 2018 (see EUROPE 12958/2). Not so long ago, “Greece was on the brink of the abyss”; today, it is performing “better than the euro area average”, she noted. She says that Greece is home to some of the world’s fastest-growing start-ups and is attracting investment while defending wages, pensions and everyday life.
See Ms von der Leyen’s speech: https://aeur.eu/f/bns (Original version in French by Mathieu Bion)