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EUROPEAN UNION

UK absent as EU leaders seek unity on 60th birthday

European Union leaders celebrated the 60th anniversary of the bloc's founding treaties at a special summit in Rome on Saturday in a symbolic show of unity despite Britain's looming departure.

Published: 25 March 2017 10:54 CET
UK absent as EU leaders seek unity on 60th birthday
Photo: AFP
Meeting without Britain, the other 27 member countries will endorse a declaration of intent for the next decade, on the Capitoline Hill where six founding states signed the Treaty of Rome on March 25, 1957.
   
EU President Donald Tusk and the prime ministers of Italy and Malta greeted the leaders as they arrived at the Renaissance-era Palazzo dei Conservatori next to the Forum, for a ceremony long on pomp and short on real politics.
   
“There will be a 100th birthday of the European Union,” European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker said in an interview with German television ahead of the summit.
   
The leaders had the words of Pope Francis ringing in their ears, after he warned on the eve of the summit that the crisis-ridden bloc “risks dying” without a new vision.
  
The Argentine pontiff urged the leaders at a personal audience in the Vatican City on Friday to show solidarity as an “antidote” to populist parties whose popularity has surged in Europe.
   
The White House congratulated the EU overnight on its 60th birthday, in a notable shift in tone for President Donald Trump's administration, whose deep scepticism about the bloc has alarmed Brussels.
   
“Our two continents share the same values and, above all, the same commitment to promote peace and prosperity through freedom, democracy, and the rule of law,” the White House said in a statement.
 
'Europe our common future'
 
The 27 are set to hear a series of speeches urging unity and leadership from Tusk, Juncker, Italian PM Paolo Gentiloni and Maltese premier Joseph Muscat, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency.
   
But British Prime Minister Theresa May's absence, four days before she launches the two-year Brexit process, and a row over the wording of the Rome declaration underscore the challenges the EU faces.
   
Security is tight with snipers on rooftops, drones in the skies and 3,000 police officers on the streets following an attack this week in London claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.
   
The Rome Declaration that the leaders will sign proclaims that “Europe is our common future”, according to a copy obtained by AFP.
  
But mass migration, the eurozone debt crisis, terrorism and the rise of populist parties have left a bloc formed from the ashes of World War II
searching for new answers.
   
The leaders are deeply divided over the way forward almost before they have started.
   
Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo only agreed to sign the declaration at the last minute, after bitterly opposing a reference to a “multi-speed” Europe favoured by powerhouse states France and Germany.
   
Poland, central Europe's largest economy, is concerned that as one of nine of the EU's current 28 members outside the eurozone, it could be left behind should countries sharing the single currency push ahead with integration.
   
Greece, the loudest voice against the austerity policies wrought by its three eurozone bailouts, meanwhile insisted that the document should mention social policies.
 
Protests planned 
 
The aim of the summit was to channel the spirit of the Treaty of Rome that Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and West Germany signed six decades ago to create the European Economic Community (EEC).
   
The treaty was signed in the Horatii and Curiatii hall of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, one of the Renaissance palaces that line the Michelangelo-designed Capitoline Square, and the political and religious heart of the Roman Empire in ancient times.
   
Police in the Eternal City will be on the alert not only for lone wolf attackers in the wake of the British parliament attack on Wednesday, but also violent anti-Europe demonstrators.
  
Around 30,000 protesters are expected to take part in four separate marches — both pro- and anti-Europe — throughout the day. Police plan to stop all traffic and declare a no-fly zone.
  
A grassroots movement led by former Greek finance minister and leading austerity critic Yanis Varoufakis will launch a new manifesto, with Varoufakis warning that the EU is “disintegrating” so fast it might not last another decade.

IMMIGRATION

Border centres and ‘safe’ states: The EU’s major asylum changes explained

UPDATE: The EU parliament has adopted a sweeping reform of Europe's asylum policies that will both harden border procedures and force all the bloc's 27 nations to share responsibility.

Published: 8 April 2024 09:42 CEST
Updated: 11 April 2024 10:29 CEST
Border centres and 'safe' states: The EU's major asylum changes explained

The parliament’s main political groups overcame opposition from far-right and far-left parties to pass the new migration and asylum pact — enshrining a difficult overhaul nearly a decade in the making.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen hailed the vote, saying it will “secure European borders… while ensuring the protection of the fundamental rights” of migrants.

“We must be the ones to decide who comes to the European Union and under what circumstances, and not the smugglers and traffickers,” she said.

EU governments — a majority of which previously approved the pact — also welcomed its adoption.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Greece’s migration minister, Dimitris Kairidis, both called it “historic”.

French President Emmanuel Macron said Europe was acting “effectively and humanely” while Italian Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi hailed what he termed “the best possible compromise”.

But there was dissent when Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban derided the reform as “another nail in the coffin of the European Union”.

“Unity is dead, secure borders are no more. Hungary will never give in to the mass migration frenzy! We need a change in Brussels in order to Stop Migration!” Orban said in a post on social media platform X.

For very different reasons, migrant charities also slammed the pact, which includes building border centres to hold asylum-seekers and sending some to outside “safe” countries.

Amnesty International said the EU was “shamefully” backing a deal “they know will lead to greater human suffering” while the Red Cross federation urged member states “to guarantee humane conditions for asylum seekers and migrants affected”.

The vote itself was initially disrupted by protesters yelling: “The pact kills — vote no!”, while dozens of demonstrators outside the parliament building in Brussels held up placards with slogans decrying the reform.

The parliament’s far-left grouping, which maintains that the reforms are incompatible with Europe’s commitment to upholding human rights, said it was a “dark day”.

It was “a pact with the devil,” said Damien Careme, a lawmaker from the Greens group.

Border centres

As well as Orban, other far-right lawmakers also opposed the passage of the 10 laws making up the pact as insufficient to stop irregular migrants they accuse of spreading insecurity and threatening to “submerge” European identity.

Marine Le Pen, the figurehead of France’s far-right National Rally, complained the changes would give “legal impunity to NGOs complicit with smugglers”.

She and her party’s leader who sits in the European Parliament, Jordan Bardella, said they would seek to overturn the reform after EU elections in June, which are tipped to boost far-right numbers in the legislature.

The pact’s measures are due to come into force in 2026, after the European Commission first sets out how it would be implemented.

New border centres would hold irregular migrants while their asylum requests are vetted. And deportations of those deemed inadmissible would be sped up.

The pact also requires EU countries to take in thousands of asylum-seekers from “frontline” states such as Italy and Greece, or — if they refuse — to provide money or other resources to the under-pressure nations.

Even ahead of Orban’s broadside, his anti-immigration government reaffirmed Hungary would not be taking in any asylum-seekers.

“This new migration pact practically gives the green light to illegal migration to Europe,” Hungary’s Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said before the vote, adding that Budapest “will not allow illegal migrants to set foot here in Hungary”.

‘EU solidarity’

German’s Scholz said on X that the accord stands for “solidarity among European states” and would “finally relieve the burden on those countries that are particularly hard hit”.

One measure particularly criticised by migrant charities is the sending of asylum-seekers to countries outside the EU deemed “safe”, if the migrant has sufficient ties to that country.

The pact resulted from years of arduous negotiations spurred by a massive inflow of irregular migrants in 2015, many from war-torn Syria and Afghanistan.

Under current EU rules, the arrival country bears responsibility for hosting and vetting asylum-seekers and returning those deemed inadmissible. That has put southern frontline states under pressure and fuelled far-right opposition.

A political breakthrough came in December when a weighted majority of EU countries backed the reforms — overcoming opposition from Hungary and Poland.

In parallel with the reform, the EU has been multiplying the same sort of deal it struck with Turkey in 2016 to stem migratory flows.

It has reached accords with Tunisia and, most recently, Egypt that are portrayed as broader cooperation arrangements. Many lawmakers have, however, criticised the deals.

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