Why the EU’s migration dilemma is pushing the bloc further right

Good morning. Today, Laura reports from a migration conference in Malta where the EU’s immigration challenge was made stark, and our finance correspondent reports on budget tweaks that could see Hungary recoup frozen EU funds without enacting demanded reforms.

On the move

The EU’s migration dilemma in tackling immigration was laid bare at a conference in Malta yesterday, as policy experts and politicians debated how to curb arrivals and defuse the far right without breaching EU values, writes Laura Dubois.

Context: The EU last year adopted a momentous asylum and migration reform which comes into force next year. But faced with the rise of far-right parties stoking anti-immigrant sentiment, politicians are calling for ever-harsher measures.

“It is not enough,” said Finnish interior minister Mari Rantanen at the conference about the reforms. “We really, really need to work on the third countries.”

The European Commission last month proposed speeding up the return of people whose asylum claims were rejected, and allowing countries to set up so-called hubs in third countries to deport people to.

“Return hubs could be a way to increase the voluntary returns,” argued Rantanen, who believes people would rather go to their home countries than return hubs. She later told the Financial Times that it would be a “good idea” for the EU to implement such a hub jointly. “If that’s not possible a group of countries could do this,” while countries doing it alone was more “problematic”.

Italy has been the first country to try putting such a scheme into practice, signing a deal with Albania to set up centres there. But that has been mired in legal difficulties. Italian media have reported that people taken to the centres have simply disappeared, while some centres have been used as dog shelters.

Officials are doubtful whether such hubs will ever be legally feasible, and EU countries have struggled to find states willing to take in their rejected asylum seekers. Eastern African countries such as Uganda have been floated, but talks don’t seem to be advancing.

While the EU scrambles to table increasingly draconian measures — eroding human rights in the process — the far right continues to rise.

Beate Gminder, newly appointed chief of the commission’s Directorate-General for Migration and Home Affairs, acknowledged that the debate had become “very polarised and negative” despite countries’ “willingness” to tackle the issue.

Michael Spindelegger, head of the International Centre for Migration Policy Development, pointed out that recent election results had shown people were “not convinced at the moment” that enough was being done on migration, although numbers have declined.

One EU official said that the bureaucratic machine was “forced to deliver policies to back up the rhetoric at the political level”, while some core issues — such as corrupt governments in countries of origin or transit, and local authorities being complicit with smugglers — were not being sufficiently tackled.

“The wider concept of asylum is losing ground in the face of more utilitarian and pragmatic approaches,” warned Malta’s president Myriam Spiteri Debono. “It starts being of concern when this narrowing of the concept of asylum stems from populist feathers.”

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Defrosting

EU countries have backed rules that would allow Hungary to receive up to €1.2bn in previously frozen funds, causing alarm among a group of dissenting member states, writes Paola Tamma.

Context: The European Commission in 2022 blocked Budapest’s access to €22bn in regional funds over rule of law concerns. Of that, €10bn was unfrozen in 2023 to get Budapest to drop a veto on Ukrainian aid.

A majority of EU countries have backed changes to rules governing EU regional funds, which allow countries to shift unspent cash to other priorities. The decision, taken by EU ambassadors yesterday, would enable Hungary to unlock a further €1.2bn in cash frozen over rule of law concerns without addressing those issues, diplomats said.

The compromise still needs to be negotiated with the European parliament.

Finland and Sweden voted against the move, some abstained, and others protested vocally.

“We regret that this provision . . . could result in the partial release of suspended funds,” wrote the Netherlands, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Ireland in a statement, and seen by the FT.

“Not a single euro from the EU budget should go to countries that do not live up to the rule of law and other EU values,” said Sweden’s EU affairs minister Jessica Rosencrantz.

It is not the first time that Budapest stands to quietly benefit from such a thaw. In February, Hungary received €157mn, and in March it requested a further €605mn from the commission through legal loopholes.

The commission has to decide on the €605mn by this month. A commission spokesperson didn’t reply to a request for comment.

What to watch today

1. Eurozone finance ministers meet in Luxembourg.

2. FT Global Affairs and Business Council in Berlin, from 0915am.

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