The reform of the Schengen Area, with the establishment of new mechanisms for the protection of the borders of the European Union will be the main priorities of France when it takes over the presidency of the bloc, in the first half of 2022, announced today Thursday in his speech President Emanuel Macron .
France is taking over the rotating EU presidency at a time when Belarus is accused of sparking an immigration crisis by smuggling migrants from the Middle East and forcing them to cross the border illegally into Poland and Lithuania.
For years, the Union has been deeply divided over immigration and the protection of the common external borders of the Schengen Area.
“I would say we need to move from a Europe that works within its borders to a Europe that is strong in the world, fully sovereign, free in its choices and lady of its own destiny,” he told a news conference. of the French Presidency.
Among France’s proposals will be the creation of an emergency response mechanism to help member countries deal with crises at their borders. These countries “should be able to rely on Frontex support” but also “member countries’ solidarity” to send police to help the border, he said. Macron also wants regular political meetings on immigration, as eurozone finance ministers are already doing to discuss economic issues.
In the April presidential election, where Macron is running for a second term, conservative and far-right parties are expected to make immigration a dominant issue, an issue on which some see the French president as lenient.
“Protecting our borders is a necessary condition, both for the security of Europeans and (…) to avoid tragedies like the ones we experienced,” Macron said, referring to the Channel Wreck at the end of November. life of 27 people.
The French president also hopes to advance the discussions on the European Immigration and Asylum Pact, which was presented by the European Commission in September 2020 but has not yet been adopted due to disagreements between many member states. He hopes that in this way there will be “better organization in the management of migration flows” in cooperation with countries of origin and transit “in order to combat trafficking in human beings, to avoid flows, to protect the external borders to harmonize our rules, especially on asylum. “
Economy
Europe’s fiscal framework, hitherto defined by the Maastricht criteria, needs to be reconsidered, Macron said, with the aim of meeting what he called “the need for new investment” following the Covid-19 pandemic.
With the health crisis, “we put in parentheses the application of the fiscal rules”, he reminded. “We need to get back to the rules that allow our economies to converge, but we can not pretend that nothing happened and ‘go back to the fiscal framework that was created in the early 1990s,'” he said.
The European Union should also discuss whether the € 750 billion recovery package is enough to revive the post-Covid-19 economy. “The question is no longer whether we are for or against 3% (the rule for a deficit of 3% of the country’s GDP). We are gone from that. “We need fiscal rules to remain a serious player, otherwise trust will be lost.”
Macron plans to convene a special summit of EU leaders in March to determine Europe’s new growth model. The EU must become a place of “production, innovation, job creation” with “an obsession: job creation and the fight against unemployment,” he said.
According to Macron, by the spring of 2022 the draft for the implementation of the global minimum corporate tax agreed this year will have been prepared by the EU. Paris will also work to adopt a “decent minimum wage” in Europe, he added.
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