European leaders were urged to change course on a deal to reform migration rules at a summit in Spain on Friday as the number of people arriving in boats to reach its borders continued to rise.
After years of acrimony and deadlock on how to manage irregular migration and asylum claims, the 27 member states have moved closer to agreeing a way to overhaul the rules and to start co-operating again. But as the national leaders gathered for talks in the Spanish city of Granada, their emerging agreement was attacked from both anti-migration hardliners and rights groups.
Poland and Hungary, which favour a harsher approach towards migration, expressed their anger that the deal may go ahead without their consent because it only requires the agreement of a majority and not unanimous approval.
“Last meeting Poland and Hungary was not satisfied ... but they pushed through the proposal,” Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán told reporters. He said his country was being “raped legally” because it was “forced to accept something ... you don’t like”.
Budapest and Warsaw are unhappy that the plan obliges EU countries to help border states that receive large numbers of irregular migrants by either giving money or taking a share of asylum seekers. Italy and Greece have long appealed for more help in processing asylum claims and accommodating refugees, as many people who travel there are actually trying to reach northern Europe.
In recent months migrant boat crossings from Tunisia to Italy have increased sharply, and 30,820 people have so far reached Greece this year, doubling from 2022. Camps on the Aegean Islands have exceeded their capacity.
The EU struck a deal with Tunisia this summer offering funding if it prevented people crossing the Mediterranean. But the agreement has run into trouble as Tunisia’s volatile president Kais Saied has publicly derided payments received so far. European commissioner Oliver Varhelyi invited him to “wire back the money” in a social media post on Thursday, indicating the deal has fallen apart.
In a breakthrough in talks this week EU diplomats agreed that rules on detention times and how long people can be kept at the border can be relaxed in times of crisis when large numbers arrive. However this has drawn fierce criticism from charity Médecins Sans Frontières, which said the idea of reducing safeguards was a “breeding ground for violent practices such as pushbacks at borders and prolonged and arbitrary detention”.
“Instead of fixing a broken asylum system in Europe and guaranteeing safe and legal pathways for those in need, this new agreement implicitly condones the harmful practices we have seen across Europe,” the NGO said in a statement. It called on European countries to “immediately change course”.
Asked about concerns that the EU’s tougher approach towards migration could harm people fleeing poverty and conflict, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said it should be a priority to tackle people smuggling.
“We have to uphold human rights and basic dignity at all times. But the truth is we have a major organised crime operation under way, major smuggling of people into Europe. For every person that dies, sadly, in the Mediterranean there’s two that die crossing Sahara. We have to do all we can to disrupt the gangs, the organised criminals that take money off people and promise them a life in Europe that isn’t real.”
