Debate: The proposed Council decision on provisional emergency measures for the external border with Belarus based on article  TFEU
Date: WEDNESDAY, 15 DECEMBER 2021
Speaker: Margaritis Schinas
Language: EN

Honourable Members, I have listened to your views very carefully. Thank you for that, I appreciate your input, and I would like also to start by saying that I find some part of the criticism that we received totally unjustified, and if I may say so, contradictory. Mr Kofod and his friends accused us of basically letting everybody in, and from the other side of the spectrum, we are accused of legalising pushbacks and keeping everybody out. Obviously, these two things cannot happen at the same time, and none of these things happened at the same time actually, because none of this happened at all.  What we are trying to do, and I think it was very clear in my opening statement, is, with this Article 78(3) procedure, respond to a specific request that the Commission got from the heads of state or government to do something under the exceptional circumstances of a major hybrid threat and attack that concerns three of our Member States that were in urgent need of solidarity. Article 78(3) is not an arbitrary procedure. It is grounded in EU law. It’s part of our constitution, of our primary law. It’s in the Treaty. So there is nothing arbitrary by someone who discovers or wakes up in the morning and tries to set up an ad hoc exceptional procedure. It is in the Treaty. It is grounded in EU law, and I feel very comfortable when I base action on the basis of the Treaties. It would have been the contrary that would worry me in particular. Having said that, I am the first to admit, and I said it, that this is an exceptional situation, an exceptional procedure. Under no circumstances should this be seen as the new normal. It will not be the new normal for the very simple reason that we do not do migration policy through exceptional measures. We want to do migration policy with a major European agreement under the new EU pact for migration and asylum. That’s what we need. We don’t have it yet. I’m confident we will get it. Also, with the support of this House.  In between, because the term ‘instrumentalisation’ is not only a term that we discovered just like that: it’s happening. And the term does not concern, of course, the poor people who are freezing in the forest. The term concerns the collusion of international smuggling networks with a regime that is using them to attack the European Union. I was there. I knew, I saw in Iraq that the Council of Belarus was actually the central point that was marketing the whole visa regime. So this has nothing to do with the people. It has to do with those who want to attack us, and it has to do with what we will do to prevent other people attacking us in the future. Precisely because this House has a role to play on migration policy, and to move beyond the exceptionality of Article 78(3), we have proposed yesterday in the Schengen Border Code, a new system that would allow for a more orderly management of accelerated procedures in terms of instrumentalisation.  Parallel to that, it is the European Union that is leading any effort to organise humanitarian assistance on the ground. It is the European Union that finances the IOM and the UNHCR to provide shelter to the most vulnerable. It is the European Union that finances the return flights of the most vulnerable so that they can start their lives back in their countries of origin, and it is the European Union that is already helping with readmission help to those who want to start a new life.  I would like again to stress that this procedure, Article 78(3), is not a normal migratory procedure. This is an emergency situation, and this is something that we are called to counter. It will not stop. We will face it in the future, too, and it is in a situation where the European Union should also be seen able to counter these attacks, to have something to say to those who want to attack us. And we will do that with the force of EU law, with the force of this Parliament, of the Council, of primary law. We will not do it under any sort of arbitrary procedures, and we should not forget that since we are discussing Article 78(3), that this is also a time-limited period of six months that only affects three Member States.  So with this proposal, we’re showing in practice that those Member States which feel they need the help, the solidarity of the European Union, will get it. We have done so in the past, and we will do so whenever challenged again in the future.