Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez argued for Europe to remain ‘open and prosperous’ instead of ‘closed and poor’ in a European Council summit in which some countries, and in particular Italy, are seeking to tighten the bloc’s stance on irregular migration.
Italy’s hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is at the forefront of efforts to reduce irregular migration to the European Union, building a consensus on the issue with 10 like-minded countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungary and Greece. But divisions remain among the bloc’s 27 countries, in particular on the controversial idea of creating return centres outside the EU.
Sánchez said in a news conference after the summit in Brussels that he had argued against Italy’s model of opening migrant processing centres in third countries, saying it created more problems. He called instead for a more coherent and humanitarian approach to what he described as a positive phenomenon to support the pensions of shrinking European populations.
Europe must work more closely with migration origin countries, including the European border agency working outside European borders to police it, to ensure migration is ‘orderly, secure and equalised’, said Sánchez.
‘In the past, millions of Europeans left everything behind to escape poverty,’ he said. ‘Today, the demographic challenge we face depends on migration. What is at stake is what Europe we want to be: a prosperous and open Europe, or a poor and closed Europe. We need to address the migration phenomenon with future generations in mind, not the next elections.’
On Thursday, Italy’s Meloni had hosted a mini-summit just ahead of the main event to discuss a common approach with 10 other countries. In a nod to the growing influence of immigration hawks, EU chief Ursula von der Leyen was also present.
The EU chief said other ideas discussed at the summit included reviewing the concept of ‘safe third country’ – nations that asylum seekers can be legally sent back to – and working with UN agencies to help ‘stranded’ migrants to return to their country of origin.
Italy has been pushing to ease the return of Syrian refugees, amid fears that Israel’s war in Lebanon – where many Syrians fled their country’s civil war – could spark a new migratory wave towards Europe.
Sánchez, however, argued that ‘orderly, responsible, well-managed migration is the answer to the demographic challenge’ that both Spain and the EU are facing, as well as the way to guarantee economic growth and the welfare state.
He recently committed to scrapping convoluted bureaucratic processes such as the recognition of foreign qualifications and residency papers which can currently take years, keeping hundreds of thousands of migrants in limbo.
Spain, he said, has both the ‘need’ and ‘capacity’ to integrate Spain’s growing migrant population.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi considered Sánchez’s criticism of Meloni’s efforts to reduce irregular migration as ‘strange’ coming from a country that he said ‘has sometimes shot at immigrants trying to cross the border from Morocco into Spain’.
‘I think that Spain should take into account the balance of certain considerations regarding the specific policies it applies to contain illegal immigration in its territory,’ Piantedosi said in an interview on Italian television channel ‘La 7’.
En el pasado, millones de europeos dejaron atrás todo para huir de la miseria.
Hoy, el reto demográfico al que nos enfrentamos depende de la migración.
Está en juego qué Europa queremos ser. Una Europa próspera y abierta, o una Europa pobre y cerrada.
Necesitamos afrontar el… pic.twitter.com/2pztVLTwVU
— Pedro Sánchez (@sanchezcastejon) October 17, 2024
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