Contribution of the Communist Workers Party of Spain

ECA Teleconference “Against the EU Migration and Asylum Pact”

Contribution of the PCTE 

 

Comrades,

The European Council passed on May 14^th, 2024 the “Migration and Asylum Pact”. This pact has meant the enactment of numerous Regulations and Directives on the matter — among them, the Regulation on Asylum Procedures, the Regulation on Return Border Procedures, the Regulation on Asylum and Migration Management, the Regulation addressing Crisis, the Regulation laying down the Standards for the Reception, and the Regulation on Resettlement.

In spite of the official EU propaganda, and also the superficial controversies between the bourgeois political parties, this normative package means an increase in the aggression against the rights of the working class. In general terms, this is the consensus of bourgeois parties about their key positions.

We currently find ourselves against a highly unstable global background. The constant impoverishment of the working class, the proximity of another crisis of overproduction, climate change, and imperialist wars are contributing to this background. Against such a background, greater population displacements are made. These are workers fleeing from poverty, but also from wars and abuses.

The European Union is heavily responsible for this situation, since its countries are to be found in very high positions within the imperialist chain. Our companies plunder the resources from other countries through capital exportation. Our governments contribute to the political and military destabilization of those countries.

Our Party is denouncing that the capitalist European Union does not assume its responsibility. This cannot be otherwise, because of its class nature. But, furthermore, it is preparing itself to slow down the increase of the migration caused by its policies.

With the Migration and Asylum Pact, very negative —and already existing— dynamics are deepened, but new and dangerous situations are also emerging. The Pact is an attempt of the European Union to focus the policy against the migration caused by capitalism, but it also clearly evidences the contradictions between the capitalist countries belonging to the Union.

Thereby, for example, the Commission and the Council reserve to themselves numerous powers, like passing the management of crisis situations, determining what countries are “submitted to migratory pressure”, passing the Solidarity Fund and controlling its implementation, and so on. But, at the same time, numerous powers are granted to the member States in order to set conditions to the EU migratory policy. This reveals the inner tensions between those countries.

The PCTE considers that such a Pact worsens the situation of helplessness of migrant workers once they arrive to the Union. It creates the juridical fiction of “non entrance”, which enables the privation of fundamental rights of migrant workers in the border for long periods of time. It introduces the prior “screening” of migrant workers — which favors a longer deadline before the start of the Asylum procedure. It also enables the record of biometric data from migrants into a single database. It includes the member states to deny asylum to migrant workers under the pretext of “national security” and “public order”.

Furthermore, it opens the door to the “negotiation” regarding migrant workers — being treated as a commodity. The countries that are not under a situation of “migratory pressure” can actually renounce to the relocation of workers from countries bordering the EU and change it for economic contributions.

The investment in other nations outside of the European Union —even the joint investment of several EU countries— in order to build an “outer border” is promoted. In practice, this is about financing countries with authoritarian regimes, like Libya, Tunisia or Morocco, so they stop the migratory flood at the service of the EU.

Spain is one of the EU countries that will predictably enter the category of “country under a situation of migratory pressure”. There has been an exponential increase in the arrivals of migrant workers to the coasts of the Canary Islands in the last weeks.

Such increase in the arrival of migrants has unleashed a political crisis in Spain. The actors involved —the Autonomous Government of the Canary Islands, the Socialist Party in the Government, and the People's Party as the main opposition party— have used several arguments. The People's Party accuses the Socialist Party to “renounce to the European aid”. With this, it becomes a discursive battering ram for the justification of the implementation of the aforementioned Pact. But the Socialist Party is contributing in practice, from the Government, to the implementation of such Pact. In 2023, the Ministry of the Interior traveled many times to Senegal in order to consolidate this country as one of the “outer borders” of the European Union. Also Pedro Sánchez —Prime Minister— recently traveled to Mauritania with Ursula von der Leyen with the same purpose.

In Spain, we are witnessing as a Party how the bourgeois parties are turning the migratory issue into a key axis of their speech. Ultimately, there is a consensus — reinforcing the policies of the European Union on the subject. The peripheral nationalist parties are contributing to the strengthening of this speech too, from a different perspective — attempting to discredit the Central Government and demanding autonomous powers in the management of the arrival of migrants. Nevertheless, they fully agree with the state-wide parties regarding the implementation of the European policy.

In essence, there is a European offensive to focus the migratory policy under  reactionary terms. In this offensive, we see the contradictions between the capitalist countries. Within the capitalist countries, there are also discursive contradictions between the bourgeois parties but, ultimately, the ensemble of bourgeois parties and capitalist countries agree with the key lines — accelerating the processes of pushbacks, depriving migrant workers of their fundamental rights to arrive, hindering and slowing down the procedures to grant asylum or subsidiary protection.