Patriots leaders, together with Geert Wilders and Viktor Orbán, will meet on the Maison de Hongrie within the Belgian capital for the group’s first pre-EU assembly.
The Patriots president declared the EU migration pact useless whereas talking to Euronews on the eve of the primary assembly of the far-right group’s leaders forward of Thursday’s European Council.
Tomorrow’s pre-summit change of views is an everyday fixture for different political households and can characteristic celebration bigwigs, together with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Fidesz, Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen of France’s Rassemblement National, the Italian deputy prime minister and the secretary of the League Matteo. Salvini and Geert Wilders, president of the Dutch Freedom Party.
The leaders will meet in central Brussels on the Maison de Hongrie, an 18th-century constructing that beforehand housed the Belgian finance minister however was purchased and repurposed by the Hungarian authorities in 2021.
“The immigration pact is useless”
“The principal matter of our assembly tomorrow will likely be immigration and the way the European Union ought to cope with member states in problem,” Belgian MEP Gerolf Annemans, president of the group, advised Euronews.
He highlighted Germany, Hungary and Poland as nations at present significantly affected by migration points.
Patriots strongly criticize the “Covenant on Migration and Asylum”, a serious reform of EU migration coverage agreed in May and but to be applied, which incorporates provisions for the redistribution of asylum seekers between EU nations.
“The immigration pact that the European Union thought might be imposed on member states proper earlier than the elections is falling aside,” Annemans mentioned. “Migration was an necessary difficulty within the election marketing campaign. And the outcomes of the Patriots events present that the pact, as conceived by Ursula von der Leyen and others, is useless,” he added.
The Patriots president mentioned he foresees “a brand new period on immigration”, including: “This is the difficulty we need to placed on the agenda of the European Council, and I anticipate the Council to confess it.”
Immigration is the primary bone of competition on the EU summit
Migration is among the key points on the agenda of the European Council summit which can convey collectively the leaders of the EU 27 in Brussels on Thursday. The Heads of State and Government will focus above all on exterior motion, on strengthening the management of exterior borders of the EU, on rising and accelerating migrant returns and on combating the concentrating on of migrants, human trafficking and smuggling.
A letter despatched to leaders by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed ten attainable future EU motion factors on migration, together with a number of that mirror the Patriots’ agenda, akin to constructing partnerships with non-EU third nations , progress on so-called migrant “returns”, countering hybrid threats and strengthening safety on the EU’s borders.
The letter additionally paved the way in which for “modern methods to deal with unlawful immigration”, particularly by “growing return facilities exterior the EU” and “drawing classes from the operations of the Italy-Albania protocol”, a lately controversial system began, wherein lots of of asylum requests will likely be evaluated by the Italian authorities in a middle based mostly on Albanian territory.
This means that the European Commission seems able to lean in direction of an method favored by the Hungarian authorities and different far-right forces, as Orbán highlighted throughout his speech within the European Parliament final week.
But von der Leyen’s letter additionally offers precedence to the “implementation of the Migration Pact”, an settlement opposed by the Patriots, and from which the Hungarian and Dutch governments have sought a waiver to keep away from its implementation.
Poland can be in opposition to the brand new guidelines, which it voted in opposition to final May. Hungarians and Poles need to focus on immigration points with different leaders, however will attempt to delete any reference to the Migration Pact within the conclusions of the EUCO summit, EU sources have advised Euronews.
“Politically (the Pact) is useless and that is what all these talks ought to be about,” Gerolf Annemans mentioned.
ANNOUNCEMENT“Our concept is to hyperlink Patriots conferences to European Council conferences. It is nice to hyperlink this to the functioning of the European Union and carefully observe the Council’s agenda by assembly earlier than the summit,” he mentioned. extra usually than tomorrow’s assembly.
The Patriots comprise 11 nationwide events from 11 EU member states. His “Patriots for Europe” parliamentary group is the third largest within the European Chamber, with 86 deputies, and might be essential for the appointment of the following European commissioners.
