Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter

EU migration and asylum pact abandons compassion and human rights

Ludovic Voet 10th June 2021

Faced with escalating deaths in the Mediterranean, official Europe needs to relocate its moral conscience.

migration and asylum pact,asylum-seekers,refugees,migrant workers
Ludovic Voet

Summer approaches and a new humanitarian crisis is developing around Europe’s shores. In just the first four days of May, some 1,500 desperate people landed in Italy. The United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) has warned of an increasing number of migrants attempting dangerous Mediterranean crossings—and of a growing death toll.

Since January, in bad weather and rough seas, hundreds of people have been rescued from the Atlantic while trying to make the perilous journey from Africa to the Canary Islands. Many more have drowned. Thousands, many of them children, attempted to enter the Spanish territory of Ceuta in May. Most were immediately returned to Morocco.

Illegal pushbacks

The European Union’s attempt to launch a new policy on migration and asylum is failing to meet this challenge. Most worryingly, it is threatening to undermine the human rights Europe claims to uphold, as well as perpetuating the abuse and exploitation of migrant labour. Eyewitness reports of illegal pushback operations by Greek border guards, forcing exhausted refugees back into unseaworthy boats, suggest that EU Frontex agents are complicit in this practice.

The European Commission published its European Pact on Migration and Asylum in September 2020. Recognising that ‘migration has been a constant feature of human history’, it purported to promised a ‘fresh start on migration in Europe’, adopting a ‘human and humane approach’. In reality, it reinforced policies of border control, detention and deportation—rather than compassion and respect for human rights—while at the same time revealing the disunity and lack of solidarity among member states.


Our job is keeping you informed!


Subscribe to our free newsletter and stay up to date with the latest Social Europe content. We will never send you spam and you can unsubscribe anytime.

Sign up here

The European Trade Union Confederation has condemned the pact. And it goes further in condemning member-state governments which seek to promote domestic political agendas by inciting hatred and xenophobia against vulnerable asylum-seekers, encouraging discrimination and nationalism and entrenching systemic racism.

Member-state obligations

The ETUC stands for the rights of all migrants, including asylum-seekers, refugees and undocumented migrants. All member states have an obligation to uphold the 1951 UN Geneva convention and its 1967 protocol, to provide legal protection to asylum-seekers—not to return them to countries where their lives or freedoms are threatened (the non-refoulement principle).

Yet the pact enables individual EU governments to breach a series of international conventions and to sponsor deportations as an alternative to allowing refugees to claim their individual right to asylum. This scheme shows anything but ‘solidarity’. Trade unions are calling for a united, humanitarian European asylum system, with an equitable distribution of people seeking refuge among member states.

The commission could have shown political leadership. It could have built a common, binding approach to migration and asylum, obliging all member states to respect international human-rights law. Instead, the strategy fell victim to anti-foreigner extremism and governments which refused to accept their shared responsibilities—leaving a minority of countries on the EU’s borders, such as Italy, still shouldering the burden.

Protecting workers

Immigrants want jobs and Europe needs safe and regular routes for labour migration, which prevent exploitation of migrant workers, and regularisation mechanisms for the millions of undocumented migrants who live and work in Europe. The pact makes no new proposals here, yet safe labour migration pathways are the only way to protect workers from abuse.

The vast majority of migrant workers are found in crucial but undervalued sectors, such as health and social care, transport, construction, agriculture and food, and domestic work. Migrant women in particular suffer low pay and insecurity and are vulnerable to sexual abuse and harassment.

Denying migrant workers their rights merely benefits unprincipled employers who use asylum-seekers and refugees, undocumented and other precarious workers as cheap labour, which in turn creates hostility and undermines conditions and pay for the whole workforce. Asylum-seekers should have access to employment in all member states and undocumented workers should have equal labour rights, with rapid action to regularise their status.

Trade union representation

The universal human rights of all workers should be respected, regardless of their employment status or nationality. The EU needs to ensure that everyone in the same workplace or sector enjoys fair pay and good working conditions, as well as job security and social protection. The best way to achieve this is through trade union representation.


We need your support


Social Europe is an independent publisher and we believe in freely available content. For this model to be sustainable, however, we depend on the solidarity of our readers. Become a Social Europe member for less than 5 Euro per month and help us produce more articles, podcasts and videos. Thank you very much for your support!

Become a Social Europe Member

The ETUC insists that all migrant workers, including asylum-seekers, refugees and undocumented people, should have the right to decent employment and to join a trade union and benefit from collective bargaining. The commission has already acknowledged that trade unions play a key role in integrating migrants into the labour market.

The pact argues that the EU ‘needs to urgently catch up in the global race for talent’, in light of Europe’s ageing and shrinking population and shortage of specific skills. Yet the ETUC is concerned that the idea of a talent pool of third-country skilled workers would encourage a ‘brain drain’, which would further impoverish countries of origin. The EU needs to welcome migrants across a range of skills, sectors and occupations—not just the highly qualified.

Saving lives

In April, as a ‘key objective’ of the pact, the commission launched its Strategy on voluntary return and reintegration, demonstrating beyond doubt that deportation—rather than rights for refugees and inclusive integration—was the underlying philosophy. The commission’s policy will see more people deported from the EU in violation of fundamental rights.

Besides reports of involvement in pushback operations, the Frontex border agency is also mired in allegations of workplace harassment, mismanagement and financial irregularities. Yet the strategy proposes that a reinforced Frontex should support member states ‘in all stages of the voluntary return and reintegration process’. The ETUC deplores moves to strengthen the powers of Frontex over deportations, at the very moment when it is under investigation for taking part in illegal pushbacks. Instead, the commission should be working with the European Parliament to bring Frontex back under democratic control and ensure it complies with fundamental rights.

The continuing loss of life highlights the need for comprehensive search-and-rescue operations in the central Mediterranean. Yet far from establishing a co-ordinated mission, the pact threatens to prevent civil-society organisations from saving lives at sea, warning that the EU and member states will work to stop private vessels undermining ‘migration management’.

Lacking scrutiny

The European Parliament has itself voiced concerns about the pact, and criticised the commission and some member states for reaching bilateral border-control agreements with third countries which lack democratic scrutiny and threaten to breach migrants’ human rights. Calling—as has the ETUC—for more legal migration channels, the parliament points out that legal migration has barely figured in the EU’s policy in this area since 2015.

In late April, in just one incident off the Libyan coast, more than 100 people died, including a mother and her child. The International Organization for Migration and UNHCR have found that migrants and refugees in Libya continue to be subjected to arbitrary detention, ill-treatment, exploitation and violence, pushing them to make risky—sometimes fatal—sea crossings.

According to UNHCR, the number of arrivals in Italy by sea this year is already over 15,000, an increase of 177 per cent on the same period in 2020. Nearly 800 people have lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean—more than double the toll for the comparable interval last year.

Such figures are frightening. But official Europe needs to stop regarding migrants merely as statistics and start to recognise them as human beings—each with an individual story and aspirations, and the right to dignity and respect.

World Day of Decent Work,platform companies, ETUC
Ludovic Voet

Ludovic Voet was elected confederal secretary of the European Trade Union Confederation in 2019.

You are here: Home / Politics / EU migration and asylum pact abandons compassion and human rights

Most Popular Posts

Visentini,ITUC,Qatar,Fight Impunity,50,000 Visentini, ‘Fight Impunity’, the ITUC and QatarFrank Hoffer
Russian soldiers' mothers,war,Ukraine The Ukraine war and Russian soldiers’ mothersJennifer Mathers and Natasha Danilova
IGU,documents,International Gas Union,lobby,lobbying,sustainable finance taxonomy,green gas,EU,COP ‘Gaslighting’ Europe on fossil fuelsFaye Holder
Schengen,Fortress Europe,Romania,Bulgaria Romania and Bulgaria stuck in EU’s second tierMagdalena Ulceluse
income inequality,inequality,Gini,1 per cent,elephant chart,elephant Global income inequality: time to revise the elephantBranko Milanovic

Most Recent Posts

transition,deindustrialisation,degradation,environment Europe’s industry and the ecological transitionCharlotte Bez and Lorenzo Feltrin
central and eastern Europe,unions,recognition Social dialogue in central and eastern EuropeMartin Myant
women soldiers,Ukraine Ukraine war: attitudes changing to women soldiersJennifer Mathers and Anna Kvit
military secrets,World Trade Organization,WTO,NATO,intellectual-property rights Military secrets and the World Trade OrganizationUgo Pagano
energy transition,Europe,wind and solar Europe’s energy transition starts to speed upDave Jones

Other Social Europe Publications

front cover scaled Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis
sere12 1 RE No. 12: Why No Economic Democracy in Sweden?

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ILO advertisement

Global Wage Report 2022-23: The impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power

The International Labour Organization's Global Wage Report is a key reference on wages and wage inequality for the academic community and policy-makers around the world.

This eighth edition of the report, The Impact of inflation and COVID-19 on wages and purchasing power, examines the evolution of real wages, giving a unique picture of wage trends globally and by region. The report includes evidence on how wages have evolved through the COVID-19 crisis as well as how the current inflationary context is biting into real wage growth in most regions of the world. The report shows that for the first time in the 21st century real wage growth has fallen to negative values while, at the same time, the gap between real productivity growth and real wage growth continues to widen.

The report analysis the evolution of the real total wage bill from 2019 to 2022 to show how its different components—employment, nominal wages and inflation—have changed during the COVID-19 crisis and, more recently, during the cost-of-living crisis. The decomposition of the total wage bill, and its evolution, is shown for all wage employees and distinguishes between women and men. The report also looks at changes in wage inequality and the gender pay gap to reveal how COVID-19 may have contributed to increasing income inequality in different regions of the world. Together, the empirical evidence in the report becomes the backbone of a policy discussion that could play a key role in a human-centred recovery from the different ongoing crises.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

Social policy in the European Union: state of play 2022

Since 2000, the annual Bilan social volume has been analysing the state of play of social policy in the European Union during the preceding year, the better to forecast developments in the new one. Co-produced by the European Social Observatory (OSE) and the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the new edition is no exception. In the context of multiple crises, the authors find that social policies gained in ambition in 2022. At the same time, the new EU economic framework, expected for 2023, should be made compatible with achieving the EU’s social and ‘green’ objectives. Finally, they raise the question whether the EU Social Imbalances Procedure and Open Strategic Autonomy paradigm could provide windows of opportunity to sustain the EU’s social ambition in the long run.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound webinar: Making telework work for everyone

Since 2020 more European workers and managers have enjoyed greater flexibility and autonomy in work and are reporting their preference for hybrid working. Also driven by technological developments and structural changes in employment, organisations are now integrating telework more permanently into their workplace.

To reflect on these shifts, on 6 December Eurofound researchers Oscar Vargas and John Hurley explored the challenges and opportunities of the surge in telework, as well as the overall growth of telework and teleworkable jobs in the EU and what this means for workers, managers, companies and policymakers.


WATCH THE WEBINAR HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

Discover the new FEPS Progressive Yearbook and what 2023 has in store for us!

The Progressive Yearbook focuses on transversal European issues that have left a mark on 2022, delivering insightful future-oriented analysis for the new year. It counts on renowned authors' contributions, including academics, politicians and analysts. This fourth edition is published in a time of war and, therefore, it mostly looks at the conflict itself, the actors involved and the implications for Europe.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube