Myopia is often considered as a common visual disorder in the EU Brussels landscape, implying auto-referential shortsightedness. These days the Commission should be credited with long awaited and courageous forward looking strategies in key areas of direct concern for people and business.
Earlier in the year was about resetting the EU’s energy policy, last week about the European digital agenda, this week is about an EU migration policy. It is the first time that the Commission moves so boldly in the latter field, one of the most controversial and challenging policy area for action at the national and EU level. It shows the ambition of Juncker’s Commission to re-affirm the founding political and social values of the EU project, which goes well beyond single market rules. The EU Treaty allows the United Kingdom and Ireland the choice to stay out of the “European Agenda on Migration” or, if they wish so, to opt-in within three months from the EC proposal. Denmark with its opt-out status on migration will not be bound by the rules and laws adopted under this programme.
This is the first compelling issue that the new Cameron government will have to tackle while defining his broader strategy on the nature and scope of the UK’s membership to the EU. To increase the chance of success for the UK and the EU as a whole, the British agenda for reform needs to be realistic, timely and inclusive. This means not asking now for new EU treaty changes and the repatriation of sovereignty already embedded in the past laborious EU treaty reforms. It means advancing the referendum on EU membership to 2016 at the latest, and stop the prolongation of an un necessary period of anxiety and uncertainty around the Brexit option that starts to upset business and governments worldwide. It means engaging more and better with European partners, avoiding a self-isolation that is unlikely to serve Britain’s interest.
An emergency plan to save lives
The first part of the EU agenda on migration responds to the compelling need of saving lives and contrasting human trafficking. It defines the immediate actions to be taken to better tackle the migration crisis in the Mediterranean and to reinforce the emergency mechanism that could prevent further human tragedies at the southern European borders.
This will be done by strengthening a coordinated presence at sea to save lives, targeting criminal smuggling networks, responding to high volumes of arrivals within the EU with a distribution mechanism for the relocation of asylum-seekers, and by resettling more safely and legally a larger number of refugees from third countries to the EU.
Towards an effective EU migration policy
The second part of the agenda looks at ways for overcoming the structural limitations of EU migration policy and the tools at its disposal. The new approach proposed by the Commission aims at managing better migration in the medium to long term, building on four pillars. First, by reducing the incentives for irregular migration and addressing the root causes through development cooperation and humanitarian assistance. Second, by improving border management and securing the external borders. Third, by ensuring a full and coherent implementation of the Common European Asylum System, notably by promoting systematic identification and fingerprinting and with efforts to reduce its abuses. The question of reviewing the Dublin convention, the EU rule that obliges asylum seekers to remain in the country where they first land, will also be considered, but later in 2016. Fourth, a new policy on legal migration from non-EU countries by modernising and overhauling the Blue Card scheme designed to attract talents to Europe, by reprioritising integration policies, and by maximising the benefits of migration policy to individuals and countries of origin, including cheaper, faster and safer remittance.
This Commission's agenda is still at its infancy as it will need to be further articulated in legislative proposals and will require the backing of the European Parliament and of the EU Council of Ministers to become fully operational. Hopefully this time Member States will not prefer to turn their attention elsewhere.