Maltese Roberta Metsola, current President of the European Parliament, is visiting France on Monday October 30. After a speech at the Sorbonne in the evening, the President of the European Parliament will meet Emmanuel Macron to push the French President to move forward on the European Union’s migration pact, which is still the subject of negotiations. La Maltese is counting on her proximity to the French president.
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This is his first official visit to France, but Roberta Metsola has already come to Paris twice since her election as head of the European Parliament and she knows Emmanuel Macron well. “ They see each other all the time », assures an advisor in Brussels. With this visit, a little over a year before the European elections, Roberta Metsola also sets a milestone by displaying her understanding with Paris: the Maltese was able to count on the support of the French president for his election, in January 2022.
In Paris, the European leader, who has never hidden his personal anti-abortion beliefs, will first pay tribute at the Pantheon to Simone Veil, at the origin of the legalization of abortion in France, in particular. This before the obligatory visits to the offices of the presidents of the Senate and the National Assembly
Moving forward on the migration pact
At lunch the next day at the Élysée, Roberta Metsola had a key message to convey to Emmanuel Macron: we must move forward on the migration pact. While most EU countries accepted the new pact provisionally on October 4it is currently the subject of negotiations with the European Parliament: officials hope that an agreement will be reached this year, after more than three years of negotiations.
Even if Emmanuel Macron is already entangled in internal debates in his party on his French bill on immigration, the entourage of the President of the European Parliament wants to be confident: “ we have a possibility » to find a compromise in the EU, « This is an opportunity not to be missed », repeats his team.
This regulation, the final piece of the EU Asylum and Migration Pact, was approved by the Member States by qualified majority. Poland and Hungary voted against, while Austria, Slovakia and the Czech Republic abstained.
If Warsaw threatened to oppose its ” veto », this cannot be done, since the procedure for adopting these texts by the Member States is done by a qualified majority vote. A procedure Poland and Hungary are constantly contesting.
Migration concerns in the context of the Israel-Hamas war
Europeans are also concerned about the possible migratory consequences of the war between Israel and Hamas, fearing experiencing a situation similar to the refugee crisis of 2015, particularly in the event of an extension of the conflict. “ If there is an extension (of conflict)we must think of refugees, like the Syrian refugees in Lebanonindicated Roberta Metsola. It is a reality that could bring us back to a situation already experienced (…) 2015 showed us what could happen in this or that scenario. »
The EU welcomes some four million Ukrainian refugees and the increase in asylum applications is putting the reception capacities of many countries under pressure.