Magnus Brunner is leading the fight against illegal immigration in the EU
ERIC DE MILDT FOR THE TIMES
A critical change is coming to European Union immigration policy, overseen by Magnus Brunner, the Austrian centre-right politician and EU migration commissioner. His declared aim on illegal arrivals — “bringing the numbers down, and keeping them down” — is enunciated with a clarity that has often been lacking. It stems, in part, from a growing recognition in the bloc that if the rise of hard-right parties across Europe is to be curtailed, centrists must be able to show that they are responding to their citizens’ concerns about increasingly uncontrolled immigration.
In 2015, the EU experienced an unprecedented influx of illegal immigration, driven chiefly by refugees fleeing conflict in Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. More than a million people arrived at European borders by sea alone. The German chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, famously said “we can do this”, as she welcomed thousands of arrivals into Germany in August. By September, the German president, Joachim Gauk, had sounded a note of caution as he said: “We are big-hearted. But our means are finite.”
Many refugee stories were indeed a success, for them and for their host countries. But with such a large influx in a short time, tension was soon seeded between Ms Merkel’s official Willkommenskultur, or “welcome culture”, and an increasing number of Germans who had growing anxieties about housing, resources and cultural integration. Public opinion hardened with reports of sexual assaults perpetrated by migrants in Cologne at New Year, and a 2016 attack by a failed Tunisian asylum seeker on a Berlin Christmas market. Acts of violence against migrants and asylum hostels in Germany escalated.
In the years since, such tension has manifested itself across many EU countries, becoming a significant factor in the success of the hard-right in European elections. In Britain, Reform UK’s rise in the polls has been fuelled in part by voters’ sense that legitimate concerns about high illegal immigration are too often ignored by an unresponsive establishment. Another factor is the widespread feeling that both the EU and UK asylum systems — set up to cope with far fewer people — are overwhelmed and broken. Between 2015 and the end of 2023, more than 8.5 million people crossed the EU’s borders to claim asylum. About 50 to 60 per cent of them were refused but, on average, 80 per cent of those asked to leave did not do so: they went under the radar.
Mr Brunner’s “firm but fair” proposals are a decisive effort to restore the application of existing EU rules to a system that has long appeared to shrug its shoulders. His goal, he argues, is to “bring our European house in order” by means of more rapid deportations of failed asylum seekers, either to their own countries or to non-EU “return hubs”.
The latter would differ from the UK’s troubled Rwanda scheme in that the hubs would be used, not for initial processing, but as a last resort for those whose claims had already been rejected. There is also a greater determination to target smuggling networks and to act swiftly to deport individuals deemed a security risk. Mr Brunner has extended a hand to work with the British foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, and the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood. The hand should be grasped. Cooling the political heat around immigration and reducing the “pull factor” of the UK, can be done only in conjunction with the EU.