New European repatriation document

The European Parliament has approved a new European repatriation document. “It is an important step towards an efficient asylum and migration policy,” says MEP Helga Stevens. “A robust repatriation policy must of course take centre stage in any successful asylum policy. The standardised document can be an important tool in this. But to make that happen, Europe must make urgent work of concluding new repatriation agreements. Then the EU coastguard can itself carry out pushbacks to African countries on the Mediterranean Sea.” Today, that coastguard is already helping the Greek government send rejected asylum seekers back to Turkey.

“At the moment, only about thirty percent of economic migrants and rejected asylum seekers actually go back to their land of origin,” notes Helga Stevens. “That percentage needs to increase drastically in order to increase support for refugees that do indeed have the right to our protection.”

Repatriation agreements

The ECR The N-VA is a member of the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), a conservative, eurorealistic parliamentary group in the European Parliament. The N-VA shares their realistic view of the European project and also advocates for the correct and intensive application of the subsidiarity principle. For example, we must not be afraid to ask ourselves if it would be better to leave certain European initiatives to the Member States. The N-VA also identifies with the emphases that the ECR places on the social-economic issues. Since the 2014 elections, the ECR has become the third largest parliamentary group in the European Parliament. ECR group, of which the N-VA is a part, played a leading role in the negotiations on this file. According to Helga Stevens, the new repatriation document proves that Europe is slowly starting to share the N-VA’s vision that there is above all need for a stronger border policy, coupled with a focus on repatriation and a more efficient security policy.

The previous document dated from as long ago as 1994 and was easy to counterfeit. “Many countries of origin therefore didn’t accept it. This new document is significantly harder to counterfeit,” Helga Stevens explains. “Now, its use is becoming a central tenet in the repatriation agreements between the EU and the countries of migration.”

No miracle cure

Helga Stevens does, however, warn that this repatriation document is no miracle cure for reducing the flow of asylum seekers to Europe: “Europe must continue working on the pushback policy and investing in the countries of origin, and must also set a maximum limit for the number of asylum seekers that can come to Europe. That said, this new European repatriation document is already sure to ease the administrative repatriation process for rejected asylum seekers,” she concludes.