Belgian NGOs want EU migration pact talks to start from scratch

11 months ago 43

Several Belgian and European civil society groups began their two-week-long campaign on Wednesday with the aim of cancelling the currently negotiated EU Migration and Asylum Pact and starting afresh.

Their “Not This Pact” campaign is backed by several civil society organisations active at the Belgian or EU level, including Caritas and the Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants (PICUM).

On the day of the campaign’s official launch, Belgian NGO CNCD-11.11.11 announced the aim of immediately stopping the negotiations and starting a new proposal from scratch, a press release published on Wednesday reads.

A new pact must be based on “building partnerships for sustainable development with countries and regions of origin, opening up safe and legal channels for migration, strict compliance with international law, intra-European solidarity in the reception of asylum seekers, and the fight against all forms of discrimination on European soil,” the press release adds.

“Solidarity, openness and respect for human rights” should be the guiding principles of the new pact, according to the NGOs who also point to the UN’s Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration, which in 2018, was signed by 162 states, as a good starting point.

Reflecting on the currently negotiated migration pact in the press release, the NGOs mainly criticise the fact that it “undermines the right of asylum and fundamental rights, instrumentalises and conditions aid to third countries, retains the ‘hotspot’ approach (detain, sort, expel), and is, therefore, a real danger for migrants.”

Negotiations on the EU’s new migration and asylum pact, proposed by the European Commission in 2020, are due to be concluded by 19 December, with the full package expected to be adopted by April 2024.

(Nils Bouckaert | Euractiv.com)