Talking Europe speaks to European Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas, whose wide-ranging portfolio covers migration and asylum, security issues, education and what the EU calls "promoting the European Way of Life", among other things. We focus on migration and the EU's efforts to rectify what Schinas calls a historic failure to build a cohesive asylum and migration policy.
'"The EU has not produced a cohesive asylum and migration policy, and this is one of the historic failures of the EU," Schinas tells Armen Georgian. "We've had to work as firefighters, running from one crisis to another. Now the time has come to produce this big agreement. We need to build a house with three floors. The first is relations with countries of origin and transit countries. We'll never be able to manage internally unless we manage externally. The second floor is border management. That means a more collective system for protecting our external border, and uniform border procedures for all member states. And the third floor is the solidarity floor; burden-sharing, across all 27 member states."
Schinas admits that EU members don’t see eye-to-eye, though. "The real problem is that member states at the moment want to go straight to the floor that interests them," he says. "So, solidarity-givers mainly want to stay on the first and second floors. And solidarity-takers believe we can have the third floor without the other two. I'm very clear that the three floors have to be constructed at the same time."
As for improving ties with countries of origin and transit countries, Schinas says: "We need to build win-win partnerships. We have to help them to create the conditions for better lives for their people, so that they can stay there, instead of those lives being put in the hands of the smugglers. And this is not only linked to money and investment. This can also be Erasmus scholarships. It could be visas. It could be trade preferences. We need to mobilise everything we have to make that win-win partnership."
On the UK-France migrant deal that will see the UK fund a detention centre in France, Schinas states: "This is the wrong way to go. It’s not compatible with the European way of life. In the past there were attempts to exploit these extra-territoriality options, and they all failed. Europe cannot and should not sub-contract its obligations, in producing a holistic migration policy. We have to do this ourselves."
So what is the "European Way of Life"? Is it a vague concept that ordinary people don't relate to? Schinas rejects that notion. "People do want to live the European way of life; they want to live in democracy and freedom," he says. "You saw that on the Maidan; you saw that in Georgia; you saw that in the Arab Spring. Of course we have an obligation to defend and project what makes us relevant to all parts of the world, but we cannot impose this on others."
Schinas was recently criticised for tweets and speeches that were seen as sidestepping Qatar’s human rights record. Pressed on this, he said: "In the case of the Gulf states, we've adopted a comprehensive new strategy that covers energy, security and people-to-people contacts. But that does not lead automatically to 'Europeanisation'. Nobody in this [EU Commission] building is under any illusions that this region will become 'Europeanised' because of our strategy."
Produced by Isabelle Romero, Sophie Samaille and Perrine Desplats
