Big change to EU laws on immigration clears 10-year hurdle in bloc
BRUSSELS — European Union lawmakers on Wednesday approved a major revamp of the bloc’s migration laws, hoping to end years of division over how to manage the entry of thousands of people without authorization and deprive the far right of a vote-winning campaign issue ahead of June elections.
In a series of 10 votes, members of the European Parliament endorsed the regulations and policies that make up the Pact on Migration and Asylum. The reforms address the thorny issue of who should take responsibility for migrants when they arrive and whether other EU countries should be obliged to help.
The proceedings were briefly interrupted by a small group of demonstrators in the public gallery who wore shirts marked “this pact kills” and shouted “vote no!”
The 27 EU member countries must now endorse the reform package, possibly in a vote in late April, before it can take effect.
European Parliament President Roberta Metsola, a former lead lawmaker on migration who helped pave the way for the reform package, posted “History made,” on the social platform X after the votes.
“It has been more than 10 years in the making. But we kept our word. A balance between solidarity and responsibility. This is the European way,” she wrote.
The plan was drawn up after 1.3 million people, mostly those fleeing war in Syria and Iraq, sought refuge in Europe in 2015. The EU’S asylum system collapsed, reception centers were overwhelmed in Greece and Italy, and countries further north built barriers to stop people entering.
But few have admitted to being happy with the new policy response to one of Europe’s biggest political crises, and even the lawmakers who drafted parts of the new regulations are unwilling to support the entire reform package.
Swedish parliamentarian Malin Bjork, who worked on refugee resettlement, said the pact does not respond to “any of the questions it was set to solve.”
She said the reform package “undermines the individual right to seek asylum” in Europe because it would build on plans that some EU countries already have to process migrants abroad. Italy has one such deal with Albania.
Bjork’s Left group voted against the pact.
The new rules include controversial measures: facial images and fingerprints could be taken of children from the age of 6, and people may be detained during screening. Fast-track deportation could be used on those not permitted to stay.
Countries also can be obligated to help their EU partners by offering to house people eligible for asylum or, failing that, to pay the costs of lodging them elsewhere.
Migrant and human rights groups mostly slammed the reform package.
In a joint statement, 22 charity groups, including the International Rescue Committee and Oxfam, said the pact “leaves troubling cracks deep within Europe’s approach to asylum and migration, and fails to offer sustainable solutions for people seeking safety at Europe’s borders.”
However, they did note that part of the reforms governing the resettlement of migrants to Europe from outside the bloc “offers a glimmer of hope for many refugees across the globe.”
Assange case: President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he is considering a request from Australia to drop the decade-long U.S. push to prosecute Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for publishing a trove of American classified documents.
For years, Australia has called on the U.S. to drop its prosecution against Assange, an Australian citizen who has fought U.S. extradition efforts from prison in the U.K.
Assange is indicted on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse over his website’s publication of classified U.S. documents almost 15 years ago.
Israel-iran threat: Israel’s foreign minister on Wednesday threatened that Israeli forces would strike Iran directly if the Islamic Republic launched an attack from its land against Israel.
His comments came amid heightened tensions between the rival powers following the killings of Iranian generals in a blast at the Iranian consulate in Syria earlier this month.
Earlier Wednesday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei reiterated a promise to retaliate against Israel over the attack on its consulate in Damascus.
Russia-ukraine war: A Russian attack struck a grocery store and a pharmacy in a Ukrainian village close to the border with Russia on Wednesday, killing three people including a 14-year-old girl, authorities said, as the Kremlin’s forces kept up a relentless bombardment.
The strike on Lyptsi, about 6 miles from the border, also injured a 16-year-old boy and a woman, officials in the northeastern Kharkiv region said.
A strike with guided aerial bombs destroyed a hospital in Vovchansk, a town close to the border in the Kharkiv region, and injured a man, authorities said.
End-of-life bill: France’s government presented a bill Wednesday to allow adults with terminal cancer or other incurable illness to take lethal medication, as public demands grow for legal options for aid in dying.
Many French people have traveled to neighboring countries where medically assisted suicide or euthanasia are legal. French President Emmanuel Macron has long promised such a bill.
To benefit from the newly proposed measure, patients would need to be over 18 and be French citizens or live in France, Health Minister Catherine Vautrin said after a Cabinet meeting.
A team of medical professionals would confirm that the patient has a grave and incurable illness, is suffering from intolerable and untreatable pain, and is seeking lethal medication of their own free will. Those with severe psychiatric conditions and neurodegenerative disorders won’t be eligible.
Another Knox trial in Italy: Amanda Knox was again the subject of a trial Wednesday in Italy, for wrongly accusing a Congolese man of murdering her roommate while the young women were exchange students in Italy. Knox was convicted of the slaying before being exonerated in a case that grabbed the global spotlight.
Knox, now 36, did not appear in Wednesday’s hearing in Florence and is being tried in absentia.
Knox was a 20-year-old student with rudimentary Italian who had recently arrived in Perugia when she endured a long night of questioning in the murder of Meredith Kercher. She ended up accusing the owner of a bar where she worked part time of killing the 21-year-old British student.
In 2016, the European Court of Human Rights ruled the interrogation violated her rights because she was questioned without a lawyer or official translator. Another man was convicted in Kercher’s 2007 murder.