On Wednesday, the European Parliament will vote on several proposals to harden up the implementation of the proposed Pact on migration and asylum.
The proposals were provisionally approved by MEPs last December, and on February 8 this year that was approved by the permanent representatives of the 27 member states (COREPER).
The Pact aims to update the procedures governing where persons who enter a member state are placed.
This will involve the introduction of quotas designed to relocate persons who arrive in “frontline” states such as Italy. Greece and Malta to other countries or that those states pay a penalty for failure to agree to their allocation.
The proposed penalty is €20,000 per applicant which some cynics pointed out would probably represent a net saving given all of the costs associated with taking in persons who barely even fit the descriptive “economic migrants”, and who in large part are a financial burden.
When the Pact was being debated last year, the Hungarian Interior Minister Bence Retvari noted that Hungary had already spent €1.5 billion protecting its borders and prevented over 270,000 illegal crossings into the EU. He said that forcing states to take a share of illegal immigrants would simply encourage the surge of people being trafficked by criminal gangs.
The fact that there were 355,300 detected illegal entries into the EU to the end of November 2023 is an indication of the scale of the problem. The total number of illegal residents has been estimated to be more than one million.
Part of the logistics of the Pact are to tighten up procedures on illegal entry. This includes updating the EURODAC fingerprint database to allow for almost instant identification which would theoretically then allow the targeted state to have bogus entrants removed and returned to a third country.
It was that aspect of the Pact which was welcomed by Minister for Justice, Helen McEntee, last December when she claimed that while “those who have a right to international protection must be given that status as quickly as possible,” that in relation to “those who are found not to have a right to international protection, they must return to their home country as quickly as possible.”
The problem is of course that many member states, including Ireland, have to date shown little desire to enforce existing restrictions and regulations. What guarantee then is there that the proposed new Pact with its ambiguities, and scope for being interpreted to allow for the continuance of a more liberal approach, will be any more effective than the current regulations?
It is that aspect of the substance of the Pact that had failed to satisfy those governments, chiefly Poland and Hungary, who had opposed the Pact – and on Wednesday MEPS from those countries and from the groups who have opposed the Pact will attempt to amend a series of reports from the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs.
The main opposition to the Pact has come from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group which along with Identity and Democracy (ID) formed the main bloc of votes against the Pact when it came up for vote last year. They, however, only currently have 127 of the 705 seats in the Parliament – although that is forecast to increase in the June elections. A recent German poll predicts that this will increase to 167 in June.
Incidentally all of the Irish MEPs who were present for the vote were among the majority of 419 who approved it. The Left group which contains Sinn Féin as well as independent MEPs Luke Flanagan, Clare Daly and Mick Wallace supported the Pact having failed previously to amend it in line with the objections made to “asylum and migration management” from by the left-liberal migrancy NGOs.
The ECR has again reiterated its opposition to the Pact ahead of this final parliamentary stage. Their position, as articulated last June in the Parliament by Nicola Procaccini, is that the correct solution is “to stop the departures from Africa of the vast majority of migrants who will have to be repatriated as they do not have the right to asylum. This saves lives at sea, not the political activity of immigration NGOs. This really disrupts the human trafficking business”
Central to ECR demands which they will be seeking again to have included and strengthened are a “more efficient screening regulation,” better use of the Eurodac capacity to identify criminal and bogus entrants, and opposition to the “resettlement” procedure. All of this would “enable Member States to quickly identify individuals who are unlikely to qualify for international protection, thus facilitating the rapid return of third-country nationals refused entry.”
Another key issue and one that has and will have implications for Ireland is the issue of “family reunification.” The ability of persons given residency, even when not properly qualifying for asylum, has been a significant factor in rising migration numbers and on the impact which those numbers have had in increasing the social welfare and other public obligations of member states.
The ECR notes that the Pact as it stands will mean that the “the definition of family members expands to include dependent adult children and families formed before arriving in the EU, not just those from the country of origin. Member states can also choose to include siblings.”
That change and others, despite the theoretical possibility that it allows for a more restrictive policy, would suggest that the Pact as it stands is not “fit for purpose.”
Unless of course that purpose is to facilitate future large scale movements of people into the EU. Any opposition being voiced by the NGOs and their lobby fodder in the European Left and Greens is merely that extremists will never be satisfied with any restrictions no matter how ineffective.
Wednesday’s votes will be crucial to the future of the EU and to the future of the Irish state. Unfortunately as things stand, there are no currently sitting MEPs nor any representative political groups who are going to represent the sort of concerns that are obviously held by a majority of Irish people if recent opinion polls and other evidence are any indication.