The EU must use all its leverage, including its economic power, to get third countries to take back migrants who arrive in the bloc illegally, Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi told an emergency conference call of European interior ministers on Tuesday following the arrival of thousands of migrants at the Spain’s North African enclave of Ceuta last week.
Piantedosi also said Rome’s decision to suspend arrangements regarding the Schengen agreement allowing for control-free movement between borders with Spain for a month was not a move aimed at punishing Madrid and he proposed the creation of EU migrant hubs outside the bloc along the lines of Italy’s centres in Albania.
“If a third country refuses to cooperate on the readmission of its own citizens, the EU must be able to impose strict conditions across all sectors, using every lever at its disposal.” Piantedosi told the meeting.
“We can no longer afford to have economic diplomacy operate on a separate track from cooperation on security and migration”.
Piantedosi said the “temporary reinstatement of internal air and maritime border controls” with arrivals from Spain was “in no way a measure directed against Spain or any other partner.
“It is a precautionary and organizational decision, intended to safeguard national security and the integrity of the entire European control system at a time of significant strain, as has occurred in many other cases,” he continued, expressing Italy’s “sincere solidarity” to the Spanish government.
Madrid and Italy’s opposition parties have blasted the Schengen suspension as propaganda, given that entry to the enclave does not automatically give access to the Schengen area and that Italy does not border Spain.
Most of the migrants who reached the enclave, many swimming around the border, have left.
Piantedosi said the time has come to “put new models of hub for the external management of asylum procedures and for repatriations to safe third countries into practice, overcoming the old ideological taboos of the past.
“Italy has led the way in this regard, with the Italy-Albania Protocol, which has attracted the growing interest of an majority of Member States,” he said.
“Processing asylum requests through expedited border procedures and carrying out repatriations directly within facilities managed in safe third countries is the strongest possible deterrent against human trafficking and irregular flows”.
