Written by 
Spain and Italy’s governments are at loggerheads after EU leaders on Thursday called for urgent new legislation to increase and speed up migrant returns, following a Brussels summit that crystallised a rightward shift in the bloc’s rhetoric.
At a press conference after the European Council meeting, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said schemes such as Italy’s migrant detention centres outside of the EU would create more problems than they solved and noted the need for regular migration routes amid a workforce shortage and an ageing population.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi considered Sánchez’s criticism “strange” coming from a country that he said “has sometimes shot at immigrants trying to cross the border from Morocco into Spain”.
Advertisement
“I think that Spain should take into account the balance of certain considerations regarding the specific policies it applies to contain illegal immigration in its territory,” Piantedosi stressed in an interview on Italian television channel ‘La 7’.
Sánchez’s words were also aimed at the President of the European Commission, Ursula Von der Leyen, who said the idea of creating migrant processing centres outside the EU was not “trivial” and that it had been discussed.
This would be in line with the policy advocated by Meloni, who this week hailed a controversial deal to send migrants from Italy to Albania for processing as “courageous”.
In Sánchez’s opinion, such a scheme only creates “new problems” and “does not address any”.
The Spanish PM has argued that “orderly, responsible, well-managed migration is the answer to the demographic challenge” that both Spain and the EU are facing, as well as the way to guarantee economic growth and the welfare state.
He recently committed to scrapping convoluted bureaucratic processes such as the recognition of foreign qualifications and residency papers which can currently take years, keeping hundreds of thousands of migrants in limbo.
Spain, he said, has both the “need” and “capacity” to integrate Spain’s growing migrant population.
On Thursday, Italy’s hard-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hosted a talks on migration ahead of the main EU event with 10 like-minded countries, including Denmark, the Netherlands, Hungary and Greece.
In a nod to the growing influence of immigration hawks, Von der Leyen was also present.
The EU chief said other ideas discussed at the summit included reviewing the concept of “safe third country” – nations asylum seekers can be legally sent back to – and working with UN agencies to help “stranded” migrants to return to their country of origin.
Italy has been pushing to ease the return of Syrian refugees, amid fears that Israel’s war in Lebanon — where many Syrians fled their country’s civil war – could spark a new migratory wave towards Europe.
READ ALSO: Spain’s PM calls on EU to speed up deal on irregular migrants