In Europe, taboos regarding migration are falling one by one. As the heads of state and government of the European Union (EU) meet on Thursday, October 17 and Friday, October 18 in Brussels for their back-to-school council, this controversial topic will be in every conversation. To fuel the debate, the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, sent them a long letter promising, in addition to the pact on migration and asylum adopted in spring, that some countries like Spain want to apply new European rules. legislation from 2025 to facilitate evictions. Today, returns are one of the weak points of the European system: less than 20% of rejected asylum seekers return to their country of origin.
Although irregular entries fell by 42% in the first nine months of 2024, with 166,000 crossings recorded by the Frontex agency, the head of the European executive wants to go much further. She suggests exploring “innovative solutions” fight illegal immigration, whether by outsourcing asylum procedures outside Europe, as Italy is doing in Albania, facilitating expulsions to third countries or creating “return centers” outside Europe under the new expulsion law. After the European agreements on migration with Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon, it also proposes starting negotiations with Senegal or even Mali.
If some Member States, such as Denmark, Austria and Italy, have campaigned in recent months to impose these “innovative solutions” On the European political agenda, Brussels had not until now considered assuming them completely. But the political situation has changed and several dams have blown up. “Even Luxembourg, very skeptical of innovative solutions, is no longer opposed to them”a European diplomat recently asked.
Modified political balances
Two years after the rise to power of the post-fascist Italian Giorgia Meloni, who made the fight against immigration her priority, the conservative right and the extreme right prospered in both the national and European elections in June, changing the political balance . in Brussels.
The European Parliament leans more to the right, with a European People’s Party (the conservative group) that is capable not only of creating a majority with the traditional, liberal and socialist forces, but also, and this is the novelty, with the groups far-right, now capable of promoting his anti-immigration agenda. At the same time, the Council brings together more and more states governed by coalitions that incorporate the extreme right or are supported by its forces, as in the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and perhaps, soon, in Austria.
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