EU leaders agree to take tougher line on migration
Right-wingers claim victory as ‘Fortress Europe’ beefs up border force and considers ‘hotspot camps’
THE European Union embraced a new hardline agenda to defend its borders against illegal migration last night as Angela Merkel warned that the fate of the bloc depended on addressing the three-year crisis.
Europe’s growing crop of populist leaders claimed victory for their “Fortress Europe” agenda, which saw the European Council summit in Brussels putting deterrence and the protection of EU borders at the forefront of its migration policy.
“Europe has many challenges but migration could end up determining Europe’s destiny,” Mrs Merkel told the German parliament before the summit, with her own political future hanging in the balance following a rebellion against her softer migration policies by her Bavarian coalition partners.
The draft summit conclusions showed the German leader’s calls for an inclusive approach to migration playing second fiddle to the need to secure Europe’s borders and process illegal migrants offshore so they could be returned to their countries of origin.
But tensions boiled over last night as Guiseppe Conte, the Italian prime minister, effectively held the summit hostage with the rare step of blocking yesterday’s joint conclusions on other EU matters until his demands on migration were met. The move forced summit chairman Donald Tusk and European Commission President Jeanclaude Juncker to cancel a news conference planned for last night.
His move came after leaders held talks on a range of issues from security and defence, to jobs, growth and competitiveness. Normally, they would issue pre-prepared conclusions once that discussion was over.
Sebastian Kurz, the conservative Austrian chancellor who is in coalition with the far-right Freedom Party, said the shift was a victory for those states who have argued that the EU’S soft approach is creating “pull factors” for migration. “It seems as if today we will manage a shift in migration policy,” he said.
Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, said the change was a victory for the concerns of Europe’s voters.
“The main issue is… about what the people believe what should be done,” he said before claiming the people wanted migrants to be sent back to where they came from. He added that the move heralded the start of a “new period when we try to reconstruct the European democracy.”
Mr Orban’s claims of a victory for democracy will send shudders through liberal Europe, which believes that the Hungarian leader is using the consensus for a harder line over migration as a Trojan horse for a broader illiberal agenda. Donald Tusk, the European Council president, warned on the eve of the summit that failure to address the migration question risked handing ammunition to populists and those with “a tendency towards overt authoritarianism” – which was widely taken as a reference to the likes of Mr Orban.
But Mr Tusk said that the EU’S measures – which include beefing up Europe’s border force to 10,000, forging return deals with African states and investigating setting up so-called hotspot camps in North Africa – were necessary to avoid something worse.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said: “We all face a simple choice: do we want national solutions or do we believe in European solutions and cooperation? For my part, I will defend European solutions.”