Germany, Sweden… How European countries are toughening their policies – L’Express

The Minister of the Interior regularly displays his desire for “firmness” in matters of immigration. “I ask parliamentarians to give me this power of firmness”, he said on October 7 at the Parisian. “In France, we are showing firmness: we are going to double the places in detention centers, from nearly 1,500 to 3,000 in eleven cities in France […] This is great firmness, without precedent, to fight against irregular immigration,” added the minister from the ranks of the Republicans. In Europe, too, more and more countries are also choosing the path of firmness.

In Germany, the question of immigration has particularly agitated the political debate for months. The increase in illegal arrivals is raising concerns in this country where reception capacities are running out. The municipalities and regions, which have also absorbed the arrival of a million Ukrainian refugees since February 2022, say they are at the limit of their reception capacity.

In magazine interview Der Spiegel published on October 20, the usually moderate Chancellor Olaf Scholz took an unusually tough tone on illegal immigration and appeared to set the bar on immigration to the right, RFI reporting. “We must finally expel on a large scale those who do not have the right to stay in Germany. We must expel more, and more quickly,” said Olaf Scholz.

Faced with a sharp increase in illegal immigration, the German government has recently strengthened its surveillance: it now plans stationary controls at its borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. “The number of people currently coming to us is too high,” Olaf Scholz recently insisted.

On October 25, Interior Minister Nancy Faeser presented a bill aimed at facilitating the return of refugees and asylum seekers without the right to stay. Among the provisions planned is the systematic expulsion of the people concerned without warning, except for families with children under 12 years old.

The Swedish government announced on October 20 that it wanted to tighten the conditions for granting social benefits to non-European migrants in order to deter new arrivals and “better integrate” those already present.

The government, led by the leader of the conservative Moderates party, Ulf Kristersson, was formed a year ago by a coalition supported for the first time by the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD) party which did not however no ministers. This coalition was elected on the promise of reducing immigration and crime.

“Since 2012, more than 770,000 people have immigrated to Sweden from countries outside the European Union and the European Economic Area,” write Ulf Kristersson and the three other leaders of the coalition parties in an article published in the daily Dagens Nyheter (DN). “With an integration policy that has virtually no requirements (towards migrants) and no incentives to integrate into society, this high immigration has created a divided Sweden,” they continue. Consequence, according to them: part of the population suffers from “segregation, (from) exclusion, (from) unemployment, (from) poor academic results and (from) the absence of common Swedish values”.

Sweden, home to 10.3 million people, is known for its generous social policies. This country has “significant problems” with people born abroad who live on social benefits, add the politicians, without providing official data on this subject. The coalition intends to implement reforms so that non-EU migrants will be obliged to find work and learn Swedish. The government also wants to introduce a ceiling for the accumulation of aid. He also wants to impose a delay, not yet specified, between the arrival in Sweden of these migrants and the moment when they will be able to receive aid.

Furthermore, Sweden and several other Nordic countries, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland, agreed on October 31 to strengthen their cooperation aimed at the expulsion of migrants who are in an irregular situation on their soil. It is in the common interest of the Nordic countries that “foreigners without residence permits are sent home”, said Denmark’s Migration Minister Kaare Dybvad Bek. “We must prevent them from traveling through our countries and falling under the radar of the authorities.”

The British Conservative government announced on October 24 that it would reduce hotel accommodation for asylum seekers, a very politically sensitive issue due to its cost, thanks to the drop in arrivals of illegal migrants.

According to official figures, 26,501 people have arrived in the United Kingdom since the start of the year by crossing the Channel on small boats, “a fifth less than in the same period of 2022”, underlined the Secretary of State. State of Immigration Robert Jenrick in front of Parliament. In 2022, a record year, 45,000 people made the crossing, despite the dangers involved, further clogging an already overwhelmed asylum system.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has made the fight against illegal immigration one of his priorities since arriving at Downing Street a year ago. He adopted a very tough policy on this subject which was at the heart of Brexit and to which the conservative electorate is very, very sensitive.

Welcoming the “progress” recorded, Robert Jenrick announced that around fifty hotels among those paid by the authorities to accommodate migrants would gradually be able to be demobilized. The process “will be completed by the end of January, with others which will follow shortly after,” said Robert Jenrick. According to him, hotel accommodation is expected to cost the taxpayer 8 million pounds (9.1 million euros) per day this year, an amount often put forward by the government to justify its policy.

The United Kingdom also announced on October 5 that it was strengthening its cooperation with several EU countries, as well as with Serbia and Albania, to combat irregular immigration, during a summit of the European political community in Granada, southern Spain.

“Fighting illegal immigration is a common European challenge. The numbers are increasing everywhere. And I think, like other European leaders, that it is up to us to decide who should come to our countries and not to criminal groups” of smugglers, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told AFP.

In Italy, the migration issue was central during the campaign for the parliamentary elections in September 2022: both Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini had promised to block boats transporting migrants from the North African coast to Italy. But, despite a series of decree laws, the number of migrant arrivals in 2023 has more than doubled compared to 2022.

Giorgia Meloni called on the EU to help, notably by supporting an agreement with Tunisia to prevent departures from that country and welcoming an agreement reached in Brussels on the sharing of asylum applications. The results of these efforts, however, are slow to translate into reality: according to a YouTrend survey for the continuous news channel SkyTG24, immigration is at the top of the reasons for voter dissatisfaction with government action. Giorgia Meloni herself admitted that she hoped to “do better” on this issue.

The far-right leader is trying to regain control of this issue. A decree published at the end of September in the official journal thus planned to require a deposit of 5,000 euros from migrants whose right to asylum has been rejected, under penalty of being sent to a detention center while their appeal is examined. But judges have released Tunisians incarcerated under this text on the grounds that it is contrary to Italian and European law. The government rushed to appeal.