Brussels rushes to "close Europe" EU’s new migration Policy

On March 11, the European Commission announced the tightening of migration policies and upcoming deportations from the EU. Along with other restrictions on the movement of people, goods, and information, this signifies that the EU leadership is drawing a line under the era of openness in the European Union. Last year, the number of illegal migrants decreased, and Brussels is clearly being disingenuous when talking about the severity of the issue. The real reasons are more about cutting expenses in preparation for war and, in this context, increasing public control. Moreover, the EU is expecting new waves of Ukrainian refugees. But above all, it’s about a shift in the balance of political power – liberals are trying to outplay the growing new opposition movements by seizing their agenda on combating migration.

Off to Rwanda, Albania, or Armenia!

Last week, the European Commission, of course, only presented a draft of the new "Return Regulation." The authors openly aim to establish quick and strict deportations of illegal migrants from the EU. Those seeking asylum in the EU will have to do so while staying in third countries. Italy is already repurposing an abandoned Albanian airbase for its "own" refugees.

The EU is following in England's footsteps, which has been considering something similar – even negotiating the creation of camps abroad for the concentration of deportees and the consideration of their asylum applications or preparation for their return to their home countries or anywhere outside the EU. A couple of years ago, London reached an agreement with Rwanda on this issue and started building a similar scheme with Armenia, though the new British government has paused on this matter for now. The U.S. government also began implementing a similar tough migration policy during Trump’s first presidency.

In general, the EU is acting just like its partners in the "collective West," even while proclaiming its unwavering liberalism. It is telling that no serious politicians have expressed doubts that the new EU law will soon be passed, and even without significant changes. The issue is clearly overdue. But from which direction is it coming? This is crucial to understand in order to grasp where this part of the world is heading.

The fact is that just in February, the EU border agency Frontex reported a 40% decrease in illegal border crossings into the EU last year, down to 240,000 unauthorized entries. These are the lowest numbers since 2021. The number of asylum applications also dropped, for instance, in Germany, where most refugees seek protection, the number of new applications decreased by almost a third!

EU representatives themselves acknowledge that to reduce illegal migration, it was pragmatically sufficient to reach agreements with neighboring countries, "especially with strategic partners, such as those on the African continent." Naturally, this required ignoring "ratings" of democracy and human rights – but this is nothing new, as such rankings are created for political purposes and are used solely for those purposes.

Whatever is being done – it's all about war

In any case, if we’re talking about the objective issue of illegal migration, the EU could have tightened its policy on this matter ten years ago, during the mass migration of Syrians and others from neighboring countries during the Syrian civil war. But now, the context and subtext of this move should be sought far from the real issue of migration.

This is not difficult to understand, as at the moment, the main context, the primary "framework" of European politics, is the Russia-Ukraine war. This war has become such an important factor in politics in this part of the world not because Euro-liberals have suddenly fallen in love with Ukraine, but because they have invested so heavily in this project, particularly in the exploitation of Ukrainian and especially Russian resources, that they cannot exit it without catastrophic losses – it has become too big to fail. As a result, even the EU's relations with the U.S. have been put at risk, as Washington has begun questioning the advisability of a clash with Moscow while, in the background, the Chinese are preparing to become the global hegemon!

However, the EU is already addressing this problem with the U.S. and recently sent an envoy to Trump. As shown by the conversation on March 13 between him, current NATO Secretary General Rutte, and the U.S. president, Euro-liberals seem not only willing to offer Trump more funding for military expenses (and thus for the U.S. defense industry), but also to abandon Ukraine’s NATO membership and are even open to discussing the "annexation of Greenland" (exact quote from the meeting with Rutte). Furthermore, they might remain silent about plans to bring the pro-Euro-liberal Canada into the U.S. fold.

In other words, even issues like these are now taking a back seat for European politicians compared to the war in Eastern Europe. Thus, the tightening of migration policies is linked to the "military" agenda. On March 5, a meeting of EU interior ministers took place, with the main issue being the EU's preparation to accept even more refugees from Ukraine. Currently, there are 4.3 million refugees in the EU, with more than half of them in Germany and Poland. As a result, the discussion focused on the mandatory redistribution of new Ukrainian refugees across the entire EU, particularly outside the Eastern European region. This means that countries that have been accepting "other" illegal migrants until now will need to free up resources and spaces to accommodate the Ukrainian refugees.

So, the EU has started removing "other" migrants—both illegal and even legal. The primary target is, of course, Syrians, who, along with Afghans, made up the two largest groups of asylum seekers in the EU last year. This explains the current rush to lift sanctions on Syria and the complimentary statements from European capitals toward the new Syrian government. They are now willing to do anything to push as many Syrian citizens as possible out of the EU.

However, even without considering the need to free up resources and space for Ukrainian refugees, Brussels is keen to urgently reduce spending on illegal migrants in general. After all, government spending is being cut, with funds being redirected to war preparations. And if cuts to funding for education, social welfare, pensions, and healthcare are already being openly discussed, it is clear that there will be no hesitation in slashing expenses related to managing the flow of illegal migrants.

But it's also about the "closing" of the EU itself: in the face of growing confrontation, the bloc and its individual countries are starting to limit or carefully control the flow of people, materials, and information. After the planned removal of hundreds of thousands of people with unclear backgrounds, often without documents or with suspicious connections and occupations, Europeans are tightening their grip in other areas as well. For instance, the Schengen Zone is cracking at the seams – following Austria, Germany has begun controlling its borders independently, the Netherlands is considering doing the same, and Denmark has always kept a distance from EU integration on migration issues. Starting next year, additional border checks will be implemented for citizens of countries for which the EU has introduced a visa-free regime.

In recent years, EU countries, without any announcement, have begun blocking not only broadcasts from a number of Russian media outlets but also access to many Russian, Belarusian, and possibly other internet resources. This includes not only websites of leading Russian news agencies but even Belarusian state publications with minimal audiences or government institutions. All of this – in the absence of any signs of rebellious sentiments among diaspora communities and with no incitement content on many such platforms – indicates that these decisions were made not in response to a real threat, but as part of a broader mobilization effort.

Liberal turnaround: 180 degrees

The current changes in migration policy are a symptom of deepening internal processes within the EU. Where did they come from? When we look at the EU leadership responsible for preparing these unprecedentedly tough policies for Brussels, we don’t see truly new faces. These are the same long-standing left- and right-liberal figures, some of whom have been entrenched in Brussels for a long time, while others have only recently been in national governments but still represented mainstream parties that built the current EU.

And suddenly, these people begin to implement a course that is 180 degrees different from their previous policies. This is not just happening in isolated cases but everywhere. In Poland, the new left-liberal and pro-Brussels government is demonstrating remarkable efforts to distance itself from Russia and Belarus and combat refugees by deploying troops with armored vehicles to the border. Germany, under the leadership of a left-liberal coalition, has learned from Eastern European countries not to hesitate but simply expel illegal migrants into neighboring Poland "while no one is watching." Just recently, right-liberal Christian Democrats and left-liberal Social Democrats jointly proposed stripping citizenship from "extremists who oppose the liberal-democratic legal order." These are not just the same liberal mainstream parties that have been advocating for the opposite for decades. In many cases, they are the very same politicians!

This shift in beliefs of truly continental scale is linked to the increasing pressure on mainstream parties in European countries and EU leadership from forces demanding a rejection of the liberal-democratic model and, in particular, the migration policies associated with it. Liberals are using their last strength to prevent the rise of new "far-right populists" to power in Germany and Austria, canceling elections in Romania, and threatening to intervene in the elections in Poland... The list is growing. For example, a similar issue recently emerged in Portugal, where "far-right populists" are gaining momentum amid the investigation of the second consecutive liberal "pro-European" government in just six months. The head of the previous government quickly moved up the ladder—he is now the current President of the European Council, António Costa... In other words, corruption is also playing a role, eating away at the EU liberals from within.

In other words, many voters in the EU supporting the "new opposition" are more outraged by phenomena like these than by refugees. However, there are many legitimate questions to be raised in migration policy, and the growing right-wing anti-liberal movements in Europe point to the absurdities it has reached. Under a relatively lax asylum system, liberals have been cutting state spending not only on migration agencies but also on law enforcement. As a result, their professional standards have sharply declined, technical equipment has deteriorated, and staff numbers have been minimized. It’s enough to say that ten years ago, in relatively decent neighborhoods in Berlin, it was common to see police patrols, and traces of drug trafficking were surprising, but now it’s the opposite—what surprises are not the drug dealers, but the rare police vehicles! The monstrous consequences of this policy are becoming harder to conceal, as seen, for example, in the recent terrorist attack in Bavaria, where a refugee, who had long been subject to deportation and had a prior criminal conviction, attacked a group of preschool children with a knife.

The political economy explains it all: liberal elites have used the influx of migrants of varying legal status to drive down wages, despite the catastrophic decline in production quality even in "old Europe," while simultaneously saving on public services and infrastructure. As a result, real wages in Western Europe have only decreased in the last couple of decades, and workers from Eastern European EU members, who hoped to earn a living by moving to "old Europe," now feel deceived. Even in recent months, while preparing new tough immigration measures, EU leaders have simultaneously invited Central Asian counterparts to send large contingents for employment in the EU, while German companies have been importing junior medical staff from Vietnam!

To summarize, the current changes in EU migration policy are least about the problem of illegal migration. They point to a fundamental transformation within the EU, following other key members of the collective West, which are mobilizing to fight for the preservation of global hegemony and, in the process, are "closing off" in every sense. In such moments, the ideological hypocrisy of the previous "long-established elites" becomes especially evident, many of whom are now trying to change their colors. All of this would be laughable if it weren't for the destructive consequences it poses for the world.