Confronted with an aging continent that needs migration to ensure its future, socialists deplore that the extreme right uses migration to spread fear and fuel xenophobic speech. In a plenary session debate in Strasbourg on the EU strategy on migration, the president of the Socialists and Democrats in the European Parliament, Iratxe García, called on von der Leyen to abandon the proposal to create deportation centres in third countries and urged the implementation of the Pact on Asylum and Migration.
García reiterated that the European Commission must act as a guardian of the treaties and the European law and must not put in place measures that are questioned in European courts - and that it is the obligation of member states to respect European law.
S&D leader, Iratxe García, said,
“Von der Leyen must abandon her inhumane and illegal proposal to create deportation centres in third countries. It is unacceptable to bow down to the extreme right in order to bless a migration model that violates human rights and which until now she considered illegal, a model that the Italian justice system has ruled as illegal, referring to Giorgia Meloni’s government and their agreement with Albania.
“Faced with the demographic drama, the Popular Party and the extreme right tell us that immigrants only come to Europe to receive subsidies and take our jobs, when in reality without them our economy would collapse.
“The socialist family will not allow either von der Leyen nor the EPP together with the extreme right to bury the migration pact, an agreement that we must begin to apply in 2025, and that took nearly a decade of negotiations. The New Pact on Asylum and Migration is the framework to develop a migration policy that expands circular migration agreements with third countries to facilitate recruitment from the place of origin. The Pact promotes economic development and political stability in the countries of origin with development aid, plans to combat food insecurity and programmes to promote opportunities for youth and women; and, at the same time, a migration policy that is relentless in the fight against mafias that exploit human trafficking.
“The cruelty of the measures that you hide under the euphemism of ‘innovative’ to deal with irregular entries is simply unacceptable. The only possible solution is a humanistic, orderly and safe migration policy.
“Migration has always been one of the great drivers for the development of nations. It is hatred and xenophobia that destroy nations.”
