(Finance) – During the Swedish presidency of the Council of the EU, in the first six months of 2023, there will be no immigration pact. This is what the permanent representative of the Sweden in the European Union, Lars Danielsson, in an interview with the Financial Times. “We will certainly move the work forward…with full force. But we will not see a migration pact completed under the Swedish presidency,” Danielsson said, adding that this won’t happen until spring 2024.
As for Ukraine it will remain at the top of the agenda of European Union under the Swedish rotating presidency, in the first quarter of 2023, he said Danielssonin an interview with the Financial Times. The Stockholm ambassador said increased humanitarian and military support for Kiev and the renewal of an EU program to support Ukrainian refugees should all be agreed without any dissent. The debate, added Danielsson, he will also have to focus on the new sanctions packages on Russia already in the works, the potential spending of confiscated Russian money and how to hold Moscow accountable for its alleged war crimes in Ukraine.
The statements of the Swedish ambassador “not only do they not represent a position taken against any specific Member State, let alone against Italy, but above all they cannot in any way be exploited politically at a national level”. Thus the minister Raffaele Fitto recalling that the migrant dossier “above all thanks to the action of President Meloni, is, for the first time, under the utmost and urgent attention” of the EU and the next Council.
The interview with the FT refers to “the structural reform of the asylum system”, a dossier “very complex” with “strongly felt and different” national interests It is neither in our interest nor even our intention to accept a compromise at any cost or on the downside, on the contrary, unlike what has been done in the past, we will defend national interests without any setbacks or ambiguities”, he says the Minister for European Affairs the South cohesion policies and the Pnrr in a note, which underlines that the words of the ambassador
Swedish Danielsson are in no way “against Italy” also because they refer to the more comprehensive process of reform of the European asylum system.
A reform “structural and overall of the European asylum system” precisely because “destined to go beyond the current rules, including Dublin, it is a very complex dossier where the national interests of the individual Member States are deeply felt and different. Like all structural reforms at the European level, this too could take longer. It is a normal, almost physiological circumstance”, adds Fitto.
“Italy intends to approach the negotiations with a constructive attitude and will support the efforts of the Swedish Presidency in this direction. In this perspective I will go to Stockholm as early as next week for a meeting with my Swedish counterpart Roswall to discuss this too and to reaffirm the will of the Italian government to start a fruitful collaboration with the Swedish presidency”