Right-wing and far-right protesters attend the "March Against Marrakech" rally in front of EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Dec. 16, 2018. Zheng Huansong\/ Press Association. All rights reserved. <\/i><\/p>\n
As its title might suggest, the
\nGlobal Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was not supposed to be
\ncontroversial. It is the first international framework to help countries
\nachieve mutual goals on international migration, like combatting human
\ntrafficking or making sure that all migrants have adequate identity documents.
\nIt is impossible for any country to accomplish these tasks alone, making the
\nestablishment of an international cooperation framework all the more urgent.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But despite its nonprovocative (and
\nnon-binding) nature, the compact has become a target of far-right politicians
\nin Europe who have stirred up a flurry of political shuffling and gamesmanship
\nleading up to the meeting on 10 and 11 December in Marrakesh, where UN member
\nstates approved the final draft of the compact.<\/p>\n
A domino effect of EU countries
\nbacking out of the compact began in Austria, with Chancellor Sebastian Kurz\u00a0arguing\u00a0that
\nthe compact mixes up labour migrants with those seeking international
\nprotection, although the compact specifically states that \u2018migrants and
\nrefugees are distinct groups governed by separate legal frameworks\u2019 and that
\nthe compact only addresses migrants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Austria takes a\u00a0hard line approach on migration,\u00a0so
\nthe decision wasn\u2019t a total surprise. But as the current holder of the rotating
\npresidency of the Council of the European Union, Austria is still expected to
\nserve\u00a0as mediator\u00a0for EU member states on difficult topics. <\/p>\n
To reject an international
\ncooperation framework that took\u00a018 months to
\nnegotiate and draft, especially at a time when migration is a
\ndivisive topic in European politics, hardly fits the bill. The decision appears
\nto have emboldened far-right politicians elsewhere in Europe to call for
\nrejection of the compact.<\/p>\n
Poland, Bulgaria, Czech Republic,
\nSlovakia, and Latvia all followed Austria\u2019s lead. The Italian government also did
\nnot attend the meeting in Marrakesh, stating that the decision on signing\u00a0must be made by
\nparliament. It was unlikely, however, that the Italian parliament would
\napprove the document, considering its recent decision to jeopardize the legal
\nstatus of an\u00a0estimated
\n130,000 people\u00a0who currently have humanitarian protection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In Belgium and the Netherlands, governments
\ncoming under pressure from the far right found it necessary to put forth an\u00a0explanatory
\ndeclaration\u00a0hedging against the supposed unintended
\nconsequences of the compact, though it is hard to imagine what consequences
\nmight arise from a document that, by design, has no teeth.<\/p>\n
While it is not surprising that
\nfar-right politicians would reflexively oppose a consensus document coming out
\nof a UN process, their increasing power in European politics has also pushed
\nmainstream conservative parties further to the right on migration. In Belgium,
\nwhich has regional, federal, and European elections in 2019, the center-right
\ncoalition government\u00a0fell apart\u00a0the
\nday before the Marrakesh meeting, after one of the coalition parties, N-VA (New
\nFlemish Alliance), refused to support the compact.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It is not unlikely that N-VA, a
\nFlemish nationalist party, made the move as a gesture to right-wing voters for
\nthe upcoming elections, as they are\u00a0under pressure\u00a0from
\nthe extreme-right party Vlaams Belang. And it is worth noting that next year
\nPoland and Slovakia, which have both refused to sign the compact, will have
\nparliamentary and presidential elections, respectively, in addition to the EU
\nparliament elections in all member states. <\/p>\n
The political turmoil around the
\nGlobal Compact should serve as a warning that nationalist politics are not
\nfading. The prospect of far-right parties making significant gains in the
\nupcoming EU parliament elections throws in doubt the EU\u2019s ability to tackle
\ndifficult issues like reform of the Dublin regulation, which sets rules on
\nwhich EU country has responsibility for handing asylum claims.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But the way in which far-right
\npoliticians were able to take advantage of the Global Compact as a tool for
\npolitical posturing can also be instructive. The public heard little about the
\ncompact (and even less about the separate\u00a0Global Compact
\non Refugees) during the negotiation and drafting stage. Thus,
\nfar-right politicians were able to say anything they wanted when the final
\ndraft was revealed. This left supporters of the compact on the defensive and
\nforced debate to revolve around whether the compact was legally binding or
\ninfringed on national sovereignty.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And despite all the current attention
\non European politics, one of the document\u2019s main priorities is to \u2018minimize the
\nadverse drivers and structural factors that compel people to leave their
\ncountry of origin\u2019. In this respect, the Global Compact can be seen as an
\nextension of the\u00a02030 Agenda for
\nSustainable Development, and the two documents reinforce each other.
\nThe European debate has thus far failed to take advantage of a larger narrative
\nabout sustainable development and helping people worldwide adapt to a changing
\nclimate and natural disasters.<\/p>\n
Finally, the European debate on the
\nGlobal Compact seems to ignore entirely the fact, as pointed out in a\u00a0recent paper\u00a0by
\nthe Centre for European Policy Studies, that EU citizens become migrants
\nwhenever they are outside the EU. European countries that reject the compact
\nare thus turning their backs on their own citizens who travel or live outside
\nthe EU.\u00a0The
\nGlobal Compact for Migration is also for Europeans.<\/p>\n
The Global Compact furthermore
\nreinforces the existing work of EU countries as part of the overall project of
\nintra-EU mobility, like efforts to better recognize skills and diplomas
\nobtained in other countries. Almost\u00a04% of EU
\ncitizens of working age\u00a0live in a member state other than that
\nof their citizenship. The percentages are significantly higher among citizens
\nof Bulgaria, Poland, Latvia, and Slovakia, which have rejected the compact. <\/p>\n
But movement within the EU is still
\nnot frictionless, and over-qualification for their jobs can still be a problem
\nfor EU citizens who have moved to other member states. In that context, the
\ncompact\u2019s objectives on inclusion and labour market integration could provide
\nanother impetus to improve implementation of the rights and benefits of EU
\ncitizens.<\/p>\n
Thus, by getting sucked into a debate This was first published on Migrations News Sheet on December 11, 2018.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Right-wing and far-right protesters attend the "March Against Marrakech" rally in front of EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Dec. 16, 2018. Zheng Huansong\/ Press Association. All rights reserved. As its title might suggest, the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was not supposed to be controversial. It is the first international framework to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1017"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1017\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nwith parameters set by far-right politicians, supporters of the compact have
\nmissed a critical opportunity to highlight that migration is not just something
\nthat happens\u00a0to<\/em>\u00a0Europe, but that Europeans are themselves
\nhighly mobile and actively benefiting from migration. The Global Compact for
\nMigration is also for Europeans.<\/p>\n