Why are thousands of migrants' deaths needed to propose a European migration policy?

Opinion by Terre des Hommes

The European Commission will propose a new EU Agenda on Migration on 13 May. Since the Lampedusa tragedy in 2013, Terre des Hommes has been reiterating that migrants tragedies in the Mediterranean Sea were not “an emergency”, but will continue to occur on a regular basis as a result of an irresponsible security-based European migration policy. Among those who lose their life at Sea there are children, pregnant women and babies.

At last, faltering steps of a responsible European policy on migration

The European Commission is about to formally adopt its new EU Agenda on Migration on 13 May 2015. The milestones of the Agenda was presented yesterday by the EU High representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini to the UN Security Council, in order to get a UN mandate to operate security operations in the Mediterranean Sea. “The problem of migrants in the Mediterranean is not only a humanitarian issue, but a security problem, Mogherini said. Migrants and refugees will not be sent back. I want to be clear on this. The Geneva Convention will be fully respected,” she underlined.

The proposed EU Agenda on Migration will then be submitted to the next European Council in June. The European Commission may have come up – finally – with a text that proposes minimum, yet important, progress on crucial measures that Terre des Hommes has been advocating for years now.

These include the opening of legal channels for migrants to enter Europe safely, restart serious operations to save lives at Sea or the yet lacking binding system of quotas for migrants throughout the EU 28 EU (also better known as a “burden sharing” system). Terre des Hommes would like to see also countries like Switzerland or Norway to be part of such system. “On the burden sharing system, we expect again an opposition between two blocks of European member states,” admitted Salvatore Parata, head of the European office at Terre des Hommes International Federation, and this cannot not be done without a revision of the Dublin Asylum System, he concluded.

Mediterranean Migrants: The EU non-repsonse (28/04/2015)

FORTRESS EUROPE: NO MORE TIME – Terre des Hommes Position Paper (23/04/2015)

Mediterranean Migrants: EU Political responsibility now (19/04/2015)

Mediterranean tragedy : the case of migrant children, support and protection for unaccompanied children in Sicily, call to the EU (16/04/2015)

To know more on European Children moving within the EU

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