A new extraordinary summit of interior ministers is due to meet in Brussels on 14 September to address the "emergency" of migration flows and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon has asked representatives of member states to discuss it in the framework of the General assembly next 30 September. However, what is happening between Africa and Europe across the Mediterranean, in the Americas and in Asia is not a humanitarian emergency but an epochal and permanent demographic change in the relations between populations in the world as a consequence of the radicalization of the crises to which international institutions and states have not wanted to give adequate and urgent answers.
Over the years the protection of fundamental rights and the recognition of human dignity, the defense of the environment, the guarantee of common goods such as water, food, health, education, democracy have become rarefied , the belief that conflicts between states and within states must be resolved peacefully to erase the fear of the horrors of war, respect for cultural and religious diversity. Today the real challenge lies in a rapid change of course to respond to demographic change, to put an end to growing scarcity and create the conditions for a democratically governed international system that guarantees common goods for all. Let us make Pope Bergoglio's cry our own: "Let's globalize solidarity".
States and international institutions have made collective commitments in recent years and have created political, juridical and financial instruments summarized in the "Millennium Goals" which are on the agenda of the next United Nations General Assembly. With the Treaty of Lisbon, the European Union innovated European asylum and immigration policies, basing them on the values of respect for human dignity, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights. It is necessary for the EU to carry out a more incisive foreign policy, also through extraordinary interventions, towards the countries and crisis areas most involved not in the emigration process, but in the biblical displacements we are witnessing. Such an extraordinary phenomenon will not be resolved with the usual "ordinary" interventions. Today we must and can change course.
The European Union must confirm:
– that border control, asylum and immigration policies are common,
– that they are based on the principle of solidarity, which is applied to all these policies and not only to the reception of refugees,
– that these common policies are drawn up, decided and implemented on a proposal from the Commission and on a majority decision by the Council and the EP,
– that it is a "community of law" founded on the extended and strengthened role of the Court of Justice.
We ask:
– as immediate measures that the Commission proposes and the Council and the EP decide: the interruption of individual and collective refoulement measures (in accordance with the Geneva Convention of 28 July 1951 and the protocol of 31 January 1967), the opening of of legal access, the protection of unaccompanied minors and the facilitation of family reunification, the acceleration of procedures for the granting of humanitarian visas and temporary protection permits, the increase in search and rescue activities at sea, the strengthening of financial and human resources of the four European Funds (for external borders, for the integration of third-country nationals, for refugees and for returns),
– such as medium-term measures, the creation of the European Asylum Agency, mandatory resettlement programs for the Member States, inclusion policies that also involve internal areas undergoing depopulation, the revision of the Regulation Dublin-3 based on a coherent European asylum policy,
– as long-term measures, the law of the soil (ius soli) as a common rule in the European Union, the transfer of development cooperation and food aid policy from shared to exclusive competences, the extension of the ordinary legislative procedure and therefore of the decision-making power of the EP to adopt urgent measures in the event of sudden influxes of immigrants,
– as a common position of the European Union in the United Nations General Assembly, the preparation and joint EU-UN supervision of legal access routes for those fleeing wars and climatic and economic disasters, the centrality of the development of the African continent in Goals of the Millennium, the commitment to respect the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Conventions which have consecrated collective rights over time.
