rights and is beneficial for us and them. At the
same time, and given that we are receiving mixed
migration flows, the debate should include the
issue of asylum and securing access to it.
“Europe is delaying the adoption and implementa-
tion of a comprehensive migration policy, but the
most important problem is that it remains divided
between the need (and international obligation) to
respect and protect human rights and the need to
reduce the number of persons irregularly entering
its territory. In practice, this controversy remains
evident in the policies that are being adopted, quite
often at the cost of human lives.”
The other dimension of the
migration issue...
Europe’s immigration problem has another
dimension, which becomes even topical than ever
in view of the European elections of 2014 and the
effort to rally far right parties under a single
alliance. The common ground of Marine Le Pen’s
National Front and like-minded parties in the
Netherlands, Austria, Belgium and the
Scandinavian countries is the creation of an “anti-
immigration platform”.
Therefore, it is a great challenge for pro- European
political forces to prevent the prevalence of far right
parties and the emergence of the most anti-
European parliament the Brussels will have ever
seen, through a decisive response to the immi-
gration issue. Both the Italian prime minister,
Enrico Letta, and the Social Democrat candidate
for the European Commission, the current presi-
dent of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz,
have raised the alarm, saying the dealing with the
immigration issues should not include half-meas-
ures, because in this case Europe will “simply
lose the election to the populists and the far right”.
Senior diplomatic sources in Greece also point
out that “when the EU fails to deal with such prob-
lems in a comprehensive manner, it is losing any
credibility with the citizens”.
During “the Year of the Mediterranean 2014”, the
successive presidencies of Greece and Italy offer
a great opportunity for taking various joint actions
and promoting a comprehensive European policy
on immigration, since this is not a mere matter of
policy, but also a matter of safeguarding the prin-
ciples of the European Union itself.
Trade with Greece
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