'We cannot call people illegal immigrants if we do not offer them legal means to enter the EU': debate with Commissioner Johansson
Greens members Satu Haapanen and Josef Frey highlighted the importance of fundamental rights and the EU’s duty of solidarity towards third countries and migrants during the CoR Plenary debate on the New Pact on Migration and Asylum with Commissioner Ylva Johansson from DG HOME.
After the presentation of the priorities of the new pact by the Commissioner and the interventions of the other political groups, Greens co-president Haapanen reminded of the privileged society in which we live in the EU, with clean water, food, shelter, access to education and safety. Speaking from experience working with asylum seekers as a teacher and volunteer, she emphasised the conditions these people leave behind in their countries in the hopes of building a better life in Europe. Moreover, she reflected on how their journey sometimes relies on human smugglers due to the lack of safe and legal routes for them to arrive in the EU. ‘We cannot call people illegal immigrants if we do not offer them legal means to enter the EU’, she remarked. She then highlighted the responsibility of the EU regarding refugee policy, and the important role it plays globally: ‘If the poorest countries in the world have to carry 80% of the immigration problem, I am sure we can manage with the amount that would be allocated to us’. Adding to that, she advocated for greater responsibility from Members States towards refugees from UN camps, therefore increasing their refugee quotas. She finalised her intervention stating that ‘the EU should bear the costs of international migration and the asylum processes. This would have a positive and anti-discriminatory effect in the host countries. It must be remembered that we are talking about really small numbers when we talk about asylum seekers coming to Europe’.
Greens alternate member Frey condemned the border screenings processes mentioned in the new pact. ‘The EU has incorporated the right to asylum under the Geneva convention but with the current pact it is clear that in certain points we are infringing our own EU legislation’, he stated. He pointed out that these processes would divide migrants upon arrival according to their country of origin, and described these as ‘not fair asylum procedures because they do not allow a thorough examination of asylum applications’. He argued that in many cases, access to a proper asylum procedure would be denied, and deemed the pact as a ‘danger to destroying the fundamental right based on Article 18’.
Watch the whole debate here.