Jonathan Portes
Professor of Economics and Public Policy, King’s College London
To paraphrase that great European, Talleyrand, the nineteenth-century French diplomat, closing our borders to refugees is undoubtedly a crime. But worse than that, it is a mistake.
The combination of dubious deals, pushbacks at sea, and draconian deportation policies may look like success. But every analysis tells us that Europe’s ageing population and shrinking workforce mean we need new workers, both in sectors like care and construction—which are heavily reliant on younger, lower-paid migrants—and to help generate the economic dynamism we so desperately lack.
So, despite the illusion of control, we are storing up political and economic trouble for the future. The so-called Fortress Europe will undermine growth, strain public finances, and erode the welfare state.
Moreover, it will alienate the continent’s existing population of migrant origin and undermine integration with further negative consequences. It is bizarre that the United Kingdom (UK)—where migrant employment rates and earnings are comparably high—wants to copy Denmark, where outcomes are far worse.
Instead, we need better and more flexible pathways for work and refuge, more investment in integration, and a swift, efficient, and humane asylum system. Managed migration cannot eliminate irregular flows, but it can make a difficult situation easier.
Andrew Selee
President, Migration Policy Institute
UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has read the public correctly and realized that if the current government in London fails to discourage small boat arrivals, it may well upend the entire immigration system and harm those already in the country. Public opinion surveys tell us that citizens in most destination countries (including many citizens of immigrant origin) want to know that their government has a handle on who is coming into the country and whether they are coming in legally.
At the same time, Westminster has pledged to expand settlement sponsorship opportunities for refugees, opening legal pathways for displaced people while reducing options for spontaneous arrivals. Former U.S. president Joe Biden did something similar late in his term of office. It is a fair trade that has a chance of preserving public confidence in the immigration system while including humanitarian protection. But much depends on the details of the proposed changes. In the end, the most important thing that could be done would probably be to adjudicate asylum claims quickly, so that those who are approved can get protection and those who are not can be returned to their countries of origin.
Pierre Vimont
Senior Fellow, Carnegie Europe
There is a sense of predictability in today’s migration policy in Europe. As governments try to regain control over illegal migration, the principles benefiting migrants are being systematically revisited. It is therefore inevitable that the asylum rules will be questioned, since illegal migrants have continuously tried to overextend the legal boundaries of asylum for their own protection.
So far, EU institutions have resisted reconsidering this basic value. But European countries inside and outside the union have been less scrupulous in trampling the right of asylum, as witnessed in Denmark and mirrored this week in Britain. There is a strong political rationale behind such moves. Confronted by a migration phenomenon that is profoundly transforming their day-to-day social environment, populations are getting increasingly frustrated. In many ways, the surge of radical-right movements all over the continent is the expression of that malaise. To have European governments copying the radical-right agenda seems the logical result of that political reality
Yet, this political realism may not be a recipe for efficiency. By not paying attention to the root causes of migration, the unravelling of asylum rights risks reinforcing misunderstanding and prejudice. Europeans should not forget that human rights remain the backbone of Western democracies.
Yasmine Zarhloule
Nonresident Scholar, Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center
In 2000, the EU adopted “United in diversity” as its motto to reflect a commitment to cultural pluralism. Twenty-five years later, countries are hardening asylum regimes amid rising domestic pressures. This challenges the traditional European self-perception as a moral refuge for those fleeing persecution. Yet, the deeper issue is not simply one of betrayal.
Historically, Europe’s hospitality and protection have always been selective. Its values function as a flexible repertoire, invoked differently depending on origin, race, timing, and (geo)political context. The union swiftly activated temporary protection status for Ukrainians following the Russian invasion, but extended similar measures neither to Syrians in 2015 nor to Palestinians fleeing the war in Gaza.
Within host societies too, hierarchies of belonging shape the opportunities available to citizens and residents of migrant descent. Seen from this angle, hardened asylum regimes are not an aberration or a betrayal of fundamental values. They reveal the inconsistencies in the way solidarity is extended to some groups but not others. It is contingent on a framework of values that is politically malleable, especially across a union of countries with diverging priorities. Importantly, the current shifts raise difficult questions about Europe’s capacity to uphold a fair and ethical asylum system in a politically fragmented landscape.
Jacob Funk Kirkegaard
Senior Fellow, Bruegel
In democracies, the majority usually gets its way in the end, within the state's constitutional boundaries. Because more than 70 percent of Europeans currently feel their country takes in too many migrants, government policy will eventually shift and bring the numbers down. The only question is which governments will implement the reforms Europeans want: will traditional political parties change their platforms or will new anti-immigration factions emerge?
It is the right of any sovereign state or—in the case of the EU—group of states to determine who can reside within their borders. Immigration and asylum policies are generally dictated by multiple simultaneous policy goals including the freedom of existing residents to choose to live with their family, increasing labor supply, or showing hospitality toward refugees.
Detailed micro-level studies show that economic migrants are most likely to take legal migration channels, and that this ensures a positive net contribution to public finances in comprehensive European welfare states. It is consequently financially prudent for political parties concerned with social and economic impacts to seek to restrict non-economic migration. This is particularly the case when public sentiment makes liberal migration policy less politically feasible overall.
Michelle Pace
Professor of Global Studies, Roskilde University
The very foundations of Europe are human rights, the rule of law, democracy, and freedom—and the EU prides itself as a community of values. But when it comes to its approach to asylum seekers, there seems to be cause for doubt. From Denmark’s “zero refugee” policy, which is now being emulated across the EU as well as in the UK, to the abysmal conditions in some asylum facilities, the question is whether European values are being left by the wayside.
EU officials often claim that the root causes of migration should be addressed. This would be desirable, no doubt, but we also need to consider European countries’ complicity in many of those causes (like the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, not to mention Palestine). Also questionable—at the very least—is the EU’s historically close cooperation with dictators in the Middle East and North Africa.
Apart from the hundreds of millions of euros given to these governments to improve their border police equipment, is there any criticism of their violence against their populations, of their increasingly authoritarian structures, or of their restrictions to press freedom? Even if there are complaints about drastic democratic regression, Europe will not forego assistance from these countries when it comes to the issue of asylum seekers.
John Kampfner
Senior Associate Fellow, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)
Migration is the most toxic issue of our time. When it comes to policymaking that reassures the public, the focus is far more on efficiency and good organization than lofty statements of principle. Across Europe, mainstream governments are flailing, spurred into panic by the populist threat.
In Britain, the rhetorical race to the bottom is not new. Many governments have sought to sound tough—like when Theresa May, speaking as home secretary in 2012, promised a “hostile environment”—while the system collapsed around them, due more to the failure to track people once they are in the country than to sheer weight of numbers. The refusal of Parliament to embrace digital identity enables people who have overstayed, or await a court appearance or deportation, to disappear. Many Conservatives are wedded to an analogue notion of libertarianism.
Governments should learn from Canada, which deserves praise for global best practice in this field. Its sponsorship system gives community groups responsibility for the first year of a new arrival. Ottawa is also candid about marrying the need for workers with the demands made on housing and health. Quiet policy is always preferable to shrill politics.
Anne Koch
Associate, German Institute for International and Security Affairs
There is a clear reversal of protection standards across the EU. Unlawful pushbacks and the temporary suspension of access to asylum are becoming normalized, while member states are reducing or halting humanitarian admission and family reunification schemes. Highly restrictive asylum reforms in individual countries and growing political pressure on the European Court of Human Rights to adjust its rulings threaten to fundamentally undermine the spirit of the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.
Despite being a restrictive reform effort that inter alia allows for far-reaching derogations from asylum procedures under the so-called crisis and force majeure regulation, the EU’s new Pact on Migration and Asylum remains dedicated to the idea of a common European asylum system based on internationally agreed protection standards. The pact’s overall focus on border control and return enforcement is complemented by a solidarity mechanism that in theory could restore trust and a spirit of cooperation between member states in the perennially fraught field of asylum.
To uphold long-standing European values in the field of refugee protection, effective access to asylum systems is key. Apart from a comprehensive implementation of the pact, this requires a rejection of initiatives aimed primarily at the externalization of asylum procedures and refugee protection to third countries.
Matteo Villa
Senior Research Fellow, Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI)
I would not use the word betrayal, but Europe’s asylum policy is undeniably undergoing a seismic shift. It took decades after the Second World War for asylum to take shape as a substantive pillar of European policy, and for that principle to become genuinely effective across most countries. Now, those foundations are being rapidly dismantled.
The new Pact on Migration and Asylum preserves the right to apply for asylum, yet sharply reduces the likelihood of obtaining protection, especially within the vastly expanded border area. Meanwhile, several governments are pursuing a highly ineffective externalization of asylum processing to third countries. This approach often generates paradoxes. In Europe, asylum and subsidiary protection have long functioned as mechanisms to regularize irregular migrants who cannot be returned because their countries of origin refuse to take them back—people who, without protection, simply remain undocumented in Europe for the long term. More than a betrayal of EU values, the current trend is better described as shortsightedness. European migration policy doesn’t just need values, it needs a return to the pragmatic approach it has long since abandoned.
