After three hours of questioning, the European Parliament’s foreign affairs (AFET) committee approved the Commissioner-designate Dubravka Šuica for the new European Union executive post responsible for the Mediterranean region, which includes a localized focus on illegal and legal migration—as well as on Europe’s overall demographic crisis.
Some of the questions posed in the committee reflect the European electorate’s deep concerns with migration, as expressed at the ballot box in recent months.
Although the Croatian candidate passed the final vote without any issue, some conservative MEPs felt that she didn’t give sufficient answers to their questions, especially regarding labor migration—which she seems to regard as the number one instrument to alleviate the burdens on Europe’s aging population—and deportations.
The national conservative Patriots for Europe (PfE) group, for instance, wished to make Šuica’s approval conditional on receiving written answers to some of their unaddressed questions, but the other parties overruled the initiative. The Greens supported it, albeit for different reasons.
In the first round of questioning, each parliamentary group could delegate one speaker to quiz the candidate. Dutch MEP Sebastiaan Stöteler (PVV/PfE) began by pointing out that Šuica only mentioned “voluntary returns” in her opening speech, and asked her whether she would promise to focus also on “involuntary returns” (i. e. the deportation of illegal migrants), in line with member states’ expectations.
Šuica acknowledged that the EU has been failing in this area for years, barely being able to deport 20% of rejected asylum seekers, and said she will work with the home affairs commissioner to create an efficient ‘Return Directive’ to accelerate deportations in the long run.
However, she also stressed that the primary objective is to implement “existing instruments,” meaning the often-criticized Migration Pact. Furthermore, along with boosting returns, Šuica’s strategy will also focus on creating more “legal pathways” for migrants who want to come and work in the EU, thereby diminishing the overall number of illegal entries.
Šuica explained that these new pathways for legal labor migration would mainly involve establishing so-called “talent partnerships” with third-world (primarily African) countries, and matching would-be migrants and their particular skill sets with employers within certain EU businesses and other sectors experiencing labor shortages.
“When I say talent partnership, that means that these young people—because we have 30% of youngsters below 25 years in [Africa]—and they are searching for jobs,” the commissioner-designate said.
So is it better that they search for jobs in a legal way than to be smuggled or trafficked and drowned in the sea?
At every turn, Šuica also stressed that Europe’s aging and shrinking population means it “badly needs talent,” so any immigration strategy must always keep in mind the demographic factor as well.
As she will be in charge of coming up with a comprehensive strategy to address the demographic crisis, Šuica said she will design a ‘Demography Toolbox’ in the first couple of months of the new administration.
The package will be designed with a wide range of different aims in mind, including encouraging people to start families younger, aiding mothers in finding the right balance between having children and careers, and helping young Europeans obtain more valuable skills, as needed in today’s job market.
She pointed out, for instance, that the EU has ten million women who are not working because they can’t afford kindergartens, and that at least eight million young people with higher education degrees who can’t find a job because they don’t have the right “digital skills, green skills, and so on” for the market.
But above all, it seemed from Šuica’s answers, the key to Europe’s demographic problem in her mind lies in increased labor migration. “I see this as a demographic reservoir,” Šuica told Latvian MEP Rihards Kols (ECR) when he asked to expand on the idea:
When you look at women and youngsters and older people and you use all this human capital or potential which we have at European level, we [still] don’t have enough workers for our labor market. This is the case, this is the truth. We have to admit this: we are shrinking; other continents are booming.
