The issue of migrants is becoming more and more the topic that most of all is putting Europe to the test.
The President of the European Council Donald Tusk has proposed the creation of regional "platforms" outside Europe for the control and management of migrants who intend to cross borders. A proposal that seems to go towards the Italian one, thus provoking protests from France, Germany and Spain which, on the contrary, insist on the creation of closed hotspots.
But from Rome they let it be known that it is not enough and threatens not to approve the conclusions of the summit if a point is not explicitly included on the sharing of responsibility in the rescue and reception of migrants, that is, the so-called primary movements. According to what emerges from EU sources, the reform of the Dublin regulation has failed, there is no agreement and there is not even a majority that would allow it to be carried out.
It would therefore seem that the solution is represented by the non-European platforms whose main objective is to stop the smugglers' business and therefore the flow of migrants to end the tragic loss of life.
Tusk specified that the intention is to launch a discussion that leads to a solution for which there is no set deadline: the summit will ask Austria, the next country to take over the EU presidency, to continue the work started, because “a precondition for a true migration policy is that Europeans decide effectively who enters their territory. People want this not because, suddenly, they become xenophobic and want to put up walls against the rest of the world, but because it is the task of every political authority to enforce the law, protect their territory and the border ”.
The stakes are high, Tusk recalled, warning colleagues against populist voices, those "in Europe and around the world claim that our inefficiency in maintaining the border is an intrinsic characteristic of the EU, or of liberal democracy. . We have seen the creation of new political movements, offering simple answers to the most complicated questions and more and more people are beginning to believe that only a strong, anti-European and anti-liberal authority, with a tendency towards authoritarianism, is capable of stopping the migratory wave. illegal".
Tusk then commented that the obvious risk is that "if people believe that only they can offer an effective solution to the migration crisis, they will also believe anything else they say".
On the table of EU leaders not only the migrant dossier but also economic and financial issues. The completion of the banking union and the role that the European Stability Mechanism will play, first of all, but also relations with the US which "are under severe pressure due to the policies of President Trump" despite "our tireless efforts to maintain the unity of the West, transatlantic relations ”.
Divisions which, Tusk recalled, go beyond trade and which make him say: "While we hope for the best, we must be ready to prepare our Union for the worst scenarios".
The package also includes the creation "in the next multi-annual EU budget of a financial structure dedicated to the fight against illegal immigration to strengthen cooperation with countries of origin and transit, in particular support for the Libyan coast guard, so that have all the necessary resources to fully control Libyan territorial waters ”.