Immigration: EU Manipulations vs. Real Solutions

Immigration is becoming the number one issue in the European Union, as the election campaign for the European Parliament gets underway. The strategy of the pro-atlanticist EU leadership seems to be that of polarizing factions between two false narratives and false “solutions”, so as to be able to control the result.

Thus, given the increasing number of irregular migrants arriving over the Mediterranean, the debate is limited to whether or not to change the Dublin Treaty rules. The real solution, namely a genuine commitment to develop Africa, is deliberately kept out of the discussion. The proof that the EU does not want to solve the problem, is that instead of joining forces with China in the Belt and Road to develop Africa, it has chosen the “de-risking” policy.

The current Dublin treaty only allows migrants to file for asylum in the country of arrival, which puts the burden on countries such as Italy and Greece. However, a reform of the treaty as proposed, where borders of any member country are considered “EU borders”, thus allowing migrants to seek asylum in any of them, will have a “pull” effect on migration waves. This is the core of the current conflict between Italy, which calls for a review of the Dublin rules, and Germany, which has refused the re-distribution of migrants from Italy.

In this context, even a bad solution, such as the one negotiated between the European Commission and Tunisia, on Rome’s initiative, has been opposed from within the Commission itself. On July 14, Italian PM Giorgia Meloni flew to Tunis together with Commission head Ursula von der Leyen and Dutch PM Rutte, to sign a MoU promising the Tunisian government a check of €255 million to be used in part to support the budget, and in part to expand law enforcement to control migration flows.

However, as of September, the money had not yet been released, under the pretext that Tunis was not complying with some human rights conditions. An EU Parliamentary delegation sent to investigate those conditions was those denied entry into Tunisia. An angry Tunisia President Kais Saied warned “foreign channels” to “stop meddling in our internal affairs, because Tunisia does not intervene in theirs”.

In reality, the oh-so-humanitarian EU bureaucracy went hysterical over the Tunisia deal, with the chief “diplomat”, Josep Borrell, taking official steps to stop it. Italian journalist Gian Micalessin has obtained copy of a letter from Borrell to Olivér Várhelyi, Commissioner for Enlargement and Neighborhood Policy, in which he de facto vetoes the deal between Tunisia, Italy and his own Commission.

The letter, dated Sept. 7, two months after the July deal, conveys “incomprehension” for the “Commission’s unilateral action” on the deal and “about some of its contents” and announces that the Foreign Affairs Council, chaired by Borrell himself, “decided to monitor closely the implementation of the MOU, since many of the points set out in the MOU remain subject to the agreement of the Member States.”

Five days later, 112 boats with more than 5,000 migrants, sailed from the Tunisian port of Sfax, and reached Lampedusa in one day. On Sept. 22, the EU unblocked half of the promised money.