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EU leaders will adopt a hawkish tone on irregular migration at Friday’s summit in Granada, according to a draft of their declaration seen by POLITICO.
The informal summit taking place in the Spanish city comes just days after EU countries struck a deal on the final piece of a flagship migration package that saw concessions made to Italy’s far-right government.
Language in the Granada declaration — dated October 4 — is much harder on the topic of migration than in a previous version from late September. The new text says that “irregular migration needs to be immediately addressed in a determined manner.”
It adds: “We will not allow smugglers to decide who enters the EU. We will continue to effectively and speedily implement all our decisions.”
The draft mentions a raft of policies to counter migration, ranging from increasing “partnerships” with countries of origin and transit for irregular migration to “resolutely fighting organised crime.”
The text even says the EU must counter the “instrumentalization of migration as a hybrid threat” — a veiled reference to the migration crisis on the border between Belarus and Poland in 2021-2022.
Most of the other language remains similar to the September version, with a focus on the EU’s strategic priorities in the areas of EU enlargement, defense, competitiveness, the single market and multilateralism — as well as migration.
