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Migrants in the Mediterranean (January 2024)

Photo: Europa Press / ABACAPRESS / IMAGO

The European People's Party (EPP), the Christian Democratic party family in the EU, this week named Commission President Ursula von der Leyen as the top candidate for the European elections and approved its election program.

In it, the EPP calls, among other things, for asylum procedures to be carried out in a “safe third country” in the future.

That would be a tightening of the migration pact, which the EU only agreed to in December after years of negotiations.

This includes asylum procedures at the external borders, but not in third countries such as Rwanda or Georgia.

What was able to be prevented at the EU Council of Ministers in June 2023 in Luxembourg will now become the program of the European People's Party, probably the strongest force in the next European Parliament.

“The right entrusts migrants to safe third countries,” reads the headline of “Le Monde”.

This means that the Rwanda solution, which the United Kingdom has been trying to implement since 2022 but has so far failed due to resistance from the highest courts, should become a European model according to the will of Europe's Christian Democrats.

A refugee who knocks on the EU's door alone or with his family from Iran, Afghanistan, Syria, Tunisia, Venezuela or the Sahel should be flown to a third country such as Rwanda, where the procedure for international protection will then take place.

If the conditions are met, the refugee is allowed to stay in this third country.

If not, he will be deported.

In September 2018, Italy's then Interior Minister Matteo Salvini loudly demanded in Vienna that the 1951 Geneva Convention should be abolished because it was too humane and too flexible.

Now Salvini and his right-wing populist Lega, who are not yet members of the EPP, have come a big step closer to their goal: the EU risks getting a Commission President who follows the line of the right-wing populists and is prepared to accept the main feature of the Geneva Convention sacrifice.

The principle of non-refoulement in the EU, the non-rejection of a person seeking protection, would have died - and with it the essence of the Geneva Convention.

After 1945, it helped millions of people to start a new life - without damaging Europe.

Quite the opposite: it has made Europe more human, it has diversified cultures, languages ​​and religions in our world, it has made us richer.

By following the British Rwanda model, the right-wing extremists are embracing the so-called classic right.

In France, Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National has managed to act on the same level as the conservative Républicains, a member of the EPP, on migration issues.

There is no longer a difference between the two parties on this issue.

There is a great danger that the EPP will allow itself to be pulled to the right in the European Parliament in order to no longer have to share its power with the Social Democrats, Greens or Liberals.

The seeds of the EPP's shift to the right are already leaving their mark in many EU countries.

Social Democrats and the Greens must strictly counter whether they are voters or heads of government - because fortunately the EPP and the Commission President are not autocrats in the EU.

If the EU abolishes its values, it abolishes itself.

The European elections in June will decide whether the EU will take this path.