Waiting for the white smoke The white smoke is close. EU home affairs ministers gathered in Brussels today for a meeting that, hopefully, will end years of tortured negotiations on the EU’s migration and asylum rules. But it’s not a done deal, yet. Tensions between the EU institutions escalated last week when the Parliament said they would block two key files – the ‘Screening’ file and a bill to amend rules on the EU’s asylum database, Eurodac, if EU ministers continue to block talks on the crisis regulation. The crisis regulation seeks to create an EU framework for managing migration flows within Europe in cases where member states struggle to deal with large arrivals. The plan, agreed in June, for a system where states that refuse to take their quota of migrants are required to pay €20,000 per person into an EU fund has been bitterly opposed by Poland and Hungary. On Thursday (28 September), Hungary’s Deputy Interior Minister Bence Rétvári told reporters that the pact would “open a newer door, a newer opportunity for even more immigrants to arrive illegally in Europe.” Poland, meanwhile, will hold a referendum on the EU migration and asylum pact on the same day as its general election on 15 October. However, there is little that either country can do to torpedo a deal. As German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser pointed out, a qualified majority of member states are in favour. But the clock is ticking, and Belgian Secretary of State Nicole de Moor warned that EU lawmakers only have “40 or 50 days” to get the legislation over the line. “We will finally deprive the demagogues and populists in Europe who are still claiming we cannot sort out the situation,” said European Commission Vice President Margaritis Schinas. He added that EU countries had spent “too many years struggling and failing” to agree on migration. There is some truth in Schinas’ claim, and it is telling that most politicians in the centre-right, centre-left and liberal parties in Brussels recognise that failure to reach a compromise, however imperfect, will embolden eurosceptics to contend that the EU is incapable of addressing citizens’ concerns about migration. This is a toxic charge in a European election year. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is in a win-win situation; an agreement on quotas and more flexibility for border authorities would mark a significant diplomatic win for her, while any failure could be blamed on Brussels. But no one should pretend that the agreement tonight will radically change the EU’s migration rules or the flow of migrants and asylum seekers into the bloc. New laws will do little to stop the boats from continuing to cross the Mediterranean Sea. Nor will they provide more badly needed resources for national border authorities to deal with the backlog of cases. NGOs such as the International Rescue Committee have warned that stricter rules on applications of children and migrants pushed to the border when third countries try to ‘weaponise’ migration and open their EU borders would a mark a big step backwards for European human rights. Even so, the deal on the table represents the best chance in almost a decade for some progress on EU migration policy. Ministers and MEPs should not make an enemy of compromise. | 