The political climate in the European Union regarding immigration can be summarized in one fact: Santiago Abascal is delighted with the atmosphere that exists. Suddenly, you think everyone is speaking your language. The majority demands tougher immigration control and dances to the tune set by Giorgia Meloni. “Some as soon as they govern, even some social democrats, are seeing how they need to make a much tougher immigration policy,” the Vox leader said this week in Brussels.
The figures do not support the alarm, but that matters little. There has been a 42% drop in arrivals of undocumented people in 2024 in EU territory, according to Frontex. The urgency is political. The electoral results of the far right have made several governments believe that they must do something, anything, although the effectiveness of those measures is debatable.
The most obvious example has been seen these days with the start of the Italian program to send asylum seekers to Albania. An internment camp has been built to which its first residents have arrived. Since it is a prison from which one cannot leave voluntarily, they should be called prisoners.
“An experiment that begins to make water as soon as it begins,” wrote Mariangela Paone. On the ship bound for the Albanian port of Shëngjin, there were only 16 migrants, but it was later discovered that four had to be returned to Italy, two because they were minors and two others because they were considered “vulnerable.” If the price was initially prohibitive, 18,000 euros per person, it rose even more with these reductions. A (deplorable) spectacle only for the cameras. Unfortunately for the EU, its flag was flying in Shëngjin.
The Gjadër prison complex, located on the grounds of a former military airport in the middle of nowhere, has 880 places. Its budget is 800 million for the next five years. It has been estimated that it will take only 28 days to process each case (with seven more for an appeal), a period that is not realistic, because it has never been done so quickly. Furthermore, a ruling by the EU Court of Justice has restricted the number of countries that Italy can consider safe with a view to deportation if they are denied asylum. There were 22 initially and now there are only seven. Bangladesh, Tunisia, Egypt and Libya have been left out. Where were the 16 who were going to open the Gjadër prison from? From Bangladesh and Egypt.
Some governments began to get excited about the idea of turning Albania into a warehouse for migrants arriving in Europe. The prime minister of that country has already turned off the tap. “It is an exclusive agreement with Italy, because we love everyone, but with Italy we have unconditional love,” Edy Rama said on Thursday. He was referring to the tens of thousands of Albanians who received shelter in Italy in 1991 or the aid received during the 1997 crisis and after the 2019 earthquake. Rama’s message could not come as a surprise. He had commented on it months before in the face of the first legal and political difficulties.
The president of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, took care to give her blessing to the Albanian alternative and others like it. He called them “innovative solutions.” Unlike the previous legislature, the German believes it has a free field to align itself more decisively with the conservative ranks at the head of a Government that also includes social democrats and liberals. It even seems that he considers the far-right Meloni as one of his own.
There is a sinister B-side to this whole debate. The question is whether European governments will dare to normalize relations with Syria with the ultimate intention of returning to that country all those who fled the civil war or the repression exercised by the Assad regime. Once again, it is Meloni who leads the way: “It is necessary to review the European Union Strategy on Syria, work with all actors and create the conditions for Syrian refugees to return to their homeland voluntarily, safely and sustainably.” ”, he announced on Tuesday in the Italian Senate.
Syria, it is worth remembering, is a country destroyed by war and its Government has not stopped harshly repressing any challenge to its power.
Meloni leads by example. In July, it sent a diplomat to Damascus as a permanent representative to the Syrian Government, not yet with the rank of ambassador, after twelve years of rupture of relations. The prime minister is not alone. That month, eight countries (Austria, Italy, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Slovenia, Greece, Croatia and Cyprus) joined together to call for a review of European policy on Syria. The goal: improve the “humanitarian situation” in Syria and facilitate the return of its refugees. Get rid of them.
That was where German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was, who has demonstrated his opportunism and lack of expertise in political communication. In October 2023, he said: “We must deport on a large scale those who have no right to stay in Germany.” Ten months later, he boasted that the number of asylum seekers had been reduced by 20%.
But, as he had made that promise, Der Spiegel reminded him in an interview that in the first half of 2024 they deported “only” 9,465 foreigners. Although it is an increase of 20% compared to the previous year, the number of those whose expulsion is pending continues to be high (more than 43,000). It had not been very smart to use the expression “on a large scale”, because you will never live up to the expectations you create. For this and other reasons, Scholz’s Social Democrats have not risen in the polls for a long time.
The precedent for the Albanian model is easy to find. The British Conservative Government wanted to do the same, but moving asylum seekers even further away, to Rwanda. The project cost in total more than 700 million pounds (840 million euros), including the bribery to the Rwandan government of 290 million, and sent a total of zero people there against their will, in part because of obstacles imposed by the courts. They only put four foreigners on a plane who accepted the trip voluntarily after being promised 3,000 pounds.
The delirium was such that a report from the Tory Government itself calculated in 2023 that it would cost the astronomical amount of 169,000 pounds per person (203,000 euros), including payments to Rwanda.
Politicians are people who can be very persistent in making mistakes. Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer canceled the Rwanda project, although he expressed interest in the Albania idea in a meeting with Meloni.
Pedro Sánchez did not want to speculate on the viability of the idea. He preferred to emphasize the field of principles: “If we give up looking at the phenomenon of immigration from a humanitarian perspective, the principle of solidarity that defines our Union will falter.” Whatever is left of him considering his response to the Gaza war.
Alberto Núñez Feijóo has praised Meloni’s immigration policy, but did not want to refer specifically to the Albanian solution. There it has been ready. The Greek Prime Minister, the conservative Kyriakos Mitsotakis, may have alerted him. With the Financial Times, he was cautious: “Let’s be careful with this. This is a bilateral agreement. I don’t know if it can be replicated at the European level. We’ll have to see if it works.”
We didn’t have to wait long. The Court of Rome gave the verdict this Friday. He has ordered the return to Italy of the twelve foreigners already interned in the Gjadër center. It has relied on the CJEU order to confirm that if Egypt and Bangladesh are not safe countries, nationals of that country cannot be imprisoned in Albania with a view to possible future deportation.
Reactionary and incompetent. It is premature to think that, with Meloni’s flagship project crashing, the radicalization of the EU on immigration will weaken. Something will occur to them.
The photo
Núñez Feijóo appeared in Congress on Wednesday without glasses. He hadn’t forgotten them at home. On Friday, he was in Brussels to meet with leaders of the European PP and he was not wearing them either. Lately, he has had vision problems – the truth is, the politics thing comes from before – so it is possible that he took the opportunity to have surgery to get rid of his myopia. While waiting to see if it is a definitive change of image, the question remains as to whether it suits you. It didn’t hurt Pablo Casado to take advantage of a summer vacation to grow a beard and look a little more adult.
I have doubts if the Feijóo without glasses is a success. Now he looks like a Spectra HR manager. Someone who is not in the business of killing anyone and who thinks that it is unlikely that the floor under his seat will open up in a meeting and he will perish in a flame or that his car will be turned into a fireball by a bomb. I don’t think they’d kill me for making a payroll mistake, I’d think. Of course, this way it won’t be too scary for Ayuso.
Books
The culture of evil
Mauro Entrialgo has explained in the book ‘Malismo’ (edited by Captain Swing) what you were all suspecting. Why are there so many politicians who revel in evil, insulting rivals or making fun of those below them? It is not pure evil, which is also the case in many cases, but the belief that in this society flaunting one’s lack of feelings and foaming at the mouth can be politically profitable. I have advice here that no one has asked for: if you have to choose, it is better to be a do-gooder than a son of a bitch.
Digging through the remains of war
I read it last year and it has now received the National Essay Award (two unrelated events). In ‘Scorched Earth’, by Editorial Crítica, archaeologist Alfredo González Ruibal outlines a vision of what we know about war from the Paleolithic to the present day and how it has been possible to achieve that knowledge in the case of very ancient times thanks to the findings of archaeology.
imminent threat
Steven Forti, professor of Contemporary History, traces the rise of the far right in Europe’s political system in ‘Democracies in Extinction’ (Akal). It is the danger of an autocracy that comes to power through the ballot box and acts accordingly very soon after. With special attention to what happened in Italy.
Al Pacino
‘Sonny Boy’, the memoirs of Al Pacino, one of the greatest American actors since the seventies, is published in Spain. The Cúpula publishing house has put the first pages of the book on its website. In The Guardian, they published an excerpt that tells of the eventful beginning of their work on the filming of ‘The Godfather’. It is known that the studio bosses did not want him in the role of Michael Corleone, although in reality they were against almost all of Francis Coppola’s casting decisions. He talks about the scene that saved him. Dinner at the restaurant with Solozzo, Vito Corleone’s rival played by Al Lettieri, and corrupt police captain McCluskey (Sterling Hayden).
- “Sterling and Al Lettieri helped keep my morale high. They set a style and were also role models for me. But in the end the script forced me to leave the table and go to the bathroom, find a hidden weapon and blow their heads off. Then, he had to escape from the restaurant and escape by jumping into a moving car. I didn’t have a double. I didn’t have a specialist. I had to do it. I jumped and didn’t reach the car. So there I was lying on the ground on White Plains Road in the Bronx, lying on my back and looking up at the sky. “I had sprained my ankle so badly that I couldn’t move.”
He thought it was almost a relief. Now they could replace him on the set and all that agony would be over. Everyone assumed they were about to fire him. The scene was completed. A specialist appeared who was able to get into the moving car. Studio officials saw the footage and decided that Coppola was right in choosing Pacino for the role. As they say in these cases, the rest is film history.
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