Tuesday

19th Mar 2024

Macron promises strong EU borders

  • French president Emmanuel Macron (l) and Green MEP Yannick Jadot in Strasbourg (Photo: europarl.europa.eu)
Listen to article

Obligatory detentions, more security screening, and faster deportations - these are the French EU presidency's migration priorities, in a right-wing home affairs agenda.

Immigration did not take centre stage in French president Emmanuel Macron's speech in the EU Parliament in Strasbourg on Wednesday (19 January).

Read and decide

Join EUobserver today

Get the EU news that really matters

Instant access to all articles — and 20 years of archives. 14-day free trial.

... or subscribe as a group

But what he did say emphasised keeping people out.

"We must protect our external borders, including by developing a rapid-intervention [military] force ... to build partnerships with countries of origin and transit, to fight against [human-]smuggling networks, and make our return policy effective," he told MEPs.

He voiced empathy for people "in great misery ... and insecurity", some of whom had walked from Africa or Asia to Europe, he said.

But Macron's empathy had its limits. "It's a horrendous humanitarian situation, but that's reality," he said.

And his speech was matched by his priorities on immigration for the next six months.

EU states should agree "common rules" on border "screening", including "an obligation to 'keep at the disposal of the authorities' persons apprehended at the external borders, by increasing detention capacities," France said in a memo to fellow EU states on 17 January.

Screening should include "health and safety checks" and fingerprinting, the memo said.

"The asylum procedure ... would only be provided for in the later stages" of the security process, France noted.

And EU states should step up deportations, by concluding "more readmission agreements with priority third countries" and creating a new "EU Return Coordinator", France added.

These were the "core" measures France believed EU states could agree on by July, following months of consultations.

France also discussed how EU states could show "solidarity" with front-line countries, such as Greece and Italy, without taking in asylum seekers.

They could pay each other off or send border guards instead, France proposed.

But there was as little in the French memo on protecting migrants' lives or welfare as there was in Macron's speech.

The EU should offer "dignified reception and better integration of people in need", the memo said, in its only words on the issue.

Misery

Record numbers of people drowned last year trying to cross the Mediterranean, while others froze to death in the forests of Belarus and Poland.

At the same time, EU countries carried out thousands of illegal "pushbacks".

Some built new walls and razor-wire fences, while conditions at many Greek migrant camps remained dismal.

But for all the human "misery" involved, EU migration has become a political weapon ahead of French elections in April, where Macron is running against three right-wing contenders.

"We cannot have a sieve-like Europe ... where people come and go as they please," the centre-right candidate, Valérie Pécresse, said on a visit to Greece last week.

And one far-right candidate, Marine Le Pen, spoke via her party in Strasbourg.

"Your Europe [the EU] is 60 years old, but our Europe is 3,000 old," one of Le Pen's MEPs, Jordan Bardella, told Macron.

"Will Europe still be Europe if refugees are everywhere? Will it still be Europe if people swear allegiance to sultans in Turkey and Morocco?," Bardella said.

Meanwhile, Macron's migration agenda comes alongside other French EU presidency projects on counterterrorism, antisemitism, and hate speech.

And some of these would also appeal to right-wing voters.

EU countries needed to tackle "the extremely sensitive nature of the notion of blasphemy, which rallies and mobilises all streams of the radical Islamist scene", such as the lone knife-man who beheaded a French schoolteacher in 2020, France warned in a recent EU memo on terrorism.

It has backed a hawkish definition of antisemitism that was being used to demonise Israel's opponents.

And for all the French concern on dialling down hatred, Macron's vision of a secular Europe contained nothing on tackling Islamophobia.

Politics

For his part, French Green MEP Yannick Jadot took the French leader to task in heated, eyeball-to-eyeball comments in the Strasbourg chamber.

Jadot highlighted the death of a young Kurdish migrant in the English Channel.

"All that she wanted was to live and to love, Mr President ... Why do you pull down the tents [in Calais migrant camps] every day?", Jadot said.

But Jadot is also running for president in April and his intervention was just more French election fever for some MEPs, such as the Spanish leader of the socialist group, Iratxe García Pérez, who asked the Frenchman to cool his tone.

Exclusive

Blasphemy and jihad: Macron launches EU debate

France has launched an EU debate on the "extremely sensitive" issue of blasphemy and jihadist violence, in a move that risks further alienating European Muslims.

Hungary will defy EU top court ruling on migration

Viktor Orbán also pledged to nominate his minister for family affairs, Katalin Novák, to be Hungary's first female president - locking in another public position before the April 2022 general election.

Amnesty: Belarus forces 'beat migrants seeking EU asylum'

Amnesty International documented numerous beatings by Belarus guards of migrants after being forced back into Belarus from EU states. The NGO spoke to 75 people lured to the borders with Poland, Lithuania and Latvia from Belarus.

Opinion

Macron has delivered for his supporters

To his opponents, Emmanuel Macron is a "president of the rich" or a panderer to Islamophobes. If the polls are right, and he nevertheless wins reelection this month, they'll insist it was due to the weakness of his opponents

Analysis

Election in sight, EU mood music changes on offshoring asylum

Designating a country like Rwanda as 'safe' under EU rules to send an asylum-seeker there requires strict conditions to be met first. But a backdoor clause introduced into EU legislation allows a future commission to strip out those requirements.

Latest News

  1. Borrell: 'Israel provoking famine', urges more aid access
  2. Europol: Israel-Gaza galvanising Jihadist recruitment in Europe
  3. EU to agree Israeli-settler blacklist, Borrell says
  4. EU ministers keen to use Russian profits for Ukraine ammo
  5. Call to change EIB defence spending rules hits scepticism
  6. Potential legal avenues to prosecute Navalny's killers
  7. EU summit, Gaza, Ukraine, reforms in focus this WEEK
  8. The present and future dystopia of political micro-targeting ads

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Nordic Council of MinistersJoin the Nordic Food Systems Takeover at COP28
  2. Nordic Council of MinistersHow women and men are affected differently by climate policy
  3. Nordic Council of MinistersArtist Jessie Kleemann at Nordic pavilion during UN climate summit COP28
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersCOP28: Gathering Nordic and global experts to put food and health on the agenda
  5. Friedrich Naumann FoundationPoems of Liberty – Call for Submission “Human Rights in Inhume War”: 250€ honorary fee for selected poems
  6. World BankWorld Bank report: How to create a future where the rewards of technology benefit all levels of society?

Stakeholders' Highlights

  1. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsThis autumn Europalia arts festival is all about GEORGIA!
  2. UNOPSFostering health system resilience in fragile and conflict-affected countries
  3. European Citizen's InitiativeThe European Commission launches the ‘ImagineEU’ competition for secondary school students in the EU.
  4. Nordic Council of MinistersThe Nordic Region is stepping up its efforts to reduce food waste
  5. UNOPSUNOPS begins works under EU-funded project to repair schools in Ukraine
  6. Georgia Ministry of Foreign AffairsGeorgia effectively prevents sanctions evasion against Russia – confirm EU, UK, USA

Join EUobserver

EU news that matters

Join us