The World Briefly

April 21, 2023

Building Walls

European Union

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The European Parliament approved new measures on Thursday that aim to accelerate the deportation of migrants who entered Europe illegally and prevent them from traveling to other European Union countries, Politico reported.

The new measures propose a more stringent registration system and call on countries to voluntarily set their own quotas on the number of migrants to accept. In emergency situations, however, the EU could order countries to accept asylum seekers.

The proposal defines an emergency as the “mass and sudden arrivals of third-country nationals,” and grants the European Commission the power to trigger the crisis mechanism.

The changes strike a middle ground on the controversial issue of whether countries will be required to take in asylum seekers from fellow EU members.

The package received support from countries such as Italy, which bear the brunt of illegal crossings, and are governed by leaders who are stridently anti-immigration.

Meanwhile, Thursday’s vote underscores a gradual rightward shift on migration in the European Parliament, which mirrors the progression of EU countries’ domestic politics but cuts against the EU’s own lawmakers’ more left-leaning record on the issue.

The shift comes amid a spike in both legal and illegal migration across Europe, with unauthorized border crossings in 2022 reaching levels not seen since 2016.

The vote comes on the heels of two recent votes that displayed the parliament’s increasingly strict line on migration, including backing the use of EU funds to support individual countries with border protection.

This story originally appeared in the April 21, 2023 newsletter, Paradise, Imperfect.