The New Pact on Asylum and Migration: How to overcome policies which create poverty?

The European Commission has relaunched its work on ‘A New Pact on Asylum and Migration’. Work on this topic was started long ago but the Commission now wishes to make the Pact a key part of its current mandate. The Commission launched a consultation on this matter and Emmaus Europe responded to it, alerting them about the alarming situations regarding welcome for migrants that have been witnessed within the Emmaus groups. In addition to the principle of freedom of movement, which was not taken into account in the roadmap for the Pact, Emmaus Europe based its proposals around the premise that the current migration policies create poverty and that our groups are then left to deal with these situations.

By responding to this consultation Emmaus Europe hopes that these situations of poverty, as well as the environmental and economic factors which lead people to emigrate, will be taken into account in the drafting of the Pact. Emmaus Europe also proposes that the measures included in the Pact be based around the following goals:

• To put a stop to European policies which create poverty, such as the Dublin Regulation, and to allow people to seek asylum or request a residency permit in the country of their choosing.
• To widen and improve access to humanitarian visas for asylum seekers in the countries of origin so that we can avoid deaths along the migration routes.
• To redirect European tax money away from Frontex, using it instead to finance dignified welcome for asylum seekers (the Geneva Convention on Climate Refugees and Economic Refugees) so that we can welcome more people and in more humane conditions.
• To stop paying regimes which violate human rights (Turkey, Libya, etc.) to manage Europe’s borders.