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On Thursday (25 June) our political leaders will meet in Brussels to adopt the new European Agenda on Migration. In our statement to the European Council we ask for the agenda to reflect a human rights-based approach which includes solidarity to “protect those in need”, improving safe and legal routes to enter the EU and the implementation of the “humanitarian clause” of the 2002 Facilitation Package. These requests are not likely to be well received by the Heads of state because the tensions among them are vivid. Firstly, EU leaders maintain the migration agenda as a national policy while it is clearly a continental phenomenon. Secondly there is an increased tendency to bring short terms and security response to migration while there is an acknowledged long term need in the EU for migration. For our demands to be heard, our leaders need to adopt a European long-term perspective. Until then, when I see the dramatic situation in Italy, I share the statement from its Prime Minister that “Europe’s answers so far have not been good enough”.

The national approach to migration is detrimental to the human rights approach we want and to the continental phenomenon. While the Italian Prime Minister and the President of the European Commission are calling for solidarity among EU countries to support migrants who cross the sea at the risk of their lives, Bulgaria will finish this year to build its 160 kilometres barbwire wall at its borders with Turkey. Hungary just announced that it will build a 170 km wall with Serbia to prevent immigrants from entering the Country. The Elections in Denmark saw the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party ranking second and becoming a king maker for the next government. This shows that national interest supersede European, and risk to dominate the negotiations in the Council on Thursday.

The short-term approach is also highly problematic not only for human rights but for the future of the EU population. While the European Commission and countries agree that there will be a need for immigration to respond to our demographic challenges (ageing population), the current lack of willingness to support only 40,000 immigrants who arrived in Italy is difficult to understand. Especially when taking the perspective of the UN Rights Chief who stated that the EU could welcome one million refugees. “This would represent barely 0.2% of the EU’s population,” pointing out that Lebanon has already taken in 26% of its population in refugees.

I call on our leaders to take a long-term perspective in their debate on Thursday. I know that their political mandates usually do not exceed five years, but migration deserve a longer-term response as well as a European response. In the end, the human rights approach is the best way to reconcile these two dimensions: not only for migrants, but also for Europeans.

Let’s engage!

Pierre Baussand – Director of Social Platform