European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos’ recent article “Europe’s migrants are here to stay” illustrates all that is wrong with the European institutions.
“It is time to face the truth,” the commissioner writes. “The only way to make our asylum and migration policies future-proof is to collectively change our way of thinking.”
Stupid grassroots citizens, don’t even bother to think!
Like Zeus — another Greek — on Mount Olympus, the truth comes from the upper floor of the Berlaymont building: “We cannot and will never be able to stop migration.” Period.
It is very clear, survey after survey, election after election, that a majority of Europeans want to drastically reduce migration and to regain control of the EU’s borders. But this trend is just dismissed in a few words. “Migration is an emotional, sensitive … issue … influenced by rising nationalism, populism and xenophobia.” Thus, any willing to slow immigration is racist and disqualified. Period. Again.
In a normal democratic process, every country should be able to decide its migration policies through national parliaments. At the European level, the willingness of the majority should be taken into account. But Avramopoulos could not care less. According to this unelected commissioner, “we all need to be ready to accept migration, mobility and diversity as the new norm.”
The new norms, like the size of apples or the curvature of cucumbers, would be determined by, guess who? The enlightened Commission. Migration will not be a question open for debate. It will be a “norm.”
Therefore, we have to accept migrants. “It is not only a moral imperative but also an economic and social imperative for our aging continent.” What about the 4 million unemployed young people in the EU, the lost generation of educated but unemployed? In his book “Exodus, How Migration Changed the World,” Oxford professor Paul Collier finds unconvincing the argument that migrants will pay for the social benefits of an aging population.
Maybe the saddest aspect is that Avramopoulos is not a leftist or a social democrat politician. He is living proof of how the left now dominates the intellectual landscape in Brussels. When right-wing politicians give up thinking differently from the left and betray their own constituents, don’t be surprised by the rise of “populism.”
Alain Destexhe
Senator
Brussels, Belgium