One of the biggest misconceptions that still prevails is that immigration is a competence of the European Union (EU). The EU Treaties, which constitute its supreme law, make immigration the responsibility of each member state.
Thus, some EU states have a framework for the admission of immigrants, while others do not. However, obligations to respect human rights derive from International Conventions and EU Treaties to provide protection/asylum to those at risk due to war or persecution due to beliefs. To this end, the EU has indicated a common framework of rules for the provision of asylum, without adapting to the specific conditions of a member state, as it has at the same time competence and responsibility for public order, security and self-protection.
Therefore, a comparison is necessary. When the Belarusian regime illegally channeled migration flows into EU states such as Lithuania, Poland and Latvia, the victim states and Brussels characterized the situation as a form of hybrid warfare by Belarus. Among other things, Lithuania had implemented from 2021 a refoulement framework, which was later enacted into legislation to repatriate migrants illegally crossing its borders. EU states cited security reasons, preventing illegal entry.
However, Turkey has been waging a hybrid attack against Cyprus for years by using illegal immigration to erode economic and social potential, and primarily to reverse demography in the free zones, which is a crime against humanity under the International Criminal Court, but the Cypriot Governments have been considering taking ... measures for years. However, in the midst of the organized Turkish hybrid attack and the abuse of the EU's perforated rules, many people in urgent need of protection and asylum are overwhelmed by the tunnel of illegal immigration, without the various "humanitarian" NGOs taking an interest. Unfortunately, an industry of exploitation of suffering has been set up with funded humanitarianism, human traffickers, cheap labor exploiters and political middlemen who have a "vested" interest in maintaining the miserable state of affairs.
The numbers of illegal immigration in the case of Cyprus are frightening.
And yet, Cyprus, located on the external borders of the EU and for years a victim of the Turkish occupation and now a hybrid attack through the instrumentalization of migration flows, rightly has to adapt the rules to the specific domestic conditions against the Turkish brutality that aims to overthrow the demography and free areas. After all, due to the illegal occupation, the adjustment should have been made a long time ago: for every illegal entry from Turkey into the occupied territory of Cyprus, the rule of asylum protection should not apply, with a direct effect on the source of immigration in combination with other measures e.g. replacing cash benefits in kind, speeding up the process of examining applications, pushbacks, but above all effective measures concerning the source of migration flows, which will act as a deterrent immediately and with a tangible result.
Kostas Mavridis, MEP DIKO (S&D), President of the Political Committee for the Mediterranean
Picture geralt / https://pixabay.com
