Brussels, my love? The EU’s migration muddle and tanks for Ukraine

The Euronews Brussels bureau brings you its latest episode of a new talk show that aims to break down European news and politics to make it more accessible to viewers. 

This week’s episode features the Dutch member of the European Parliament, Jeroen Lenaers from the European People’s Party, Vlad Gheorghe, a Romanian MEP from Renew Europe and Helena Hahn, a policy analyst at the European Policy Centre.

European Union leaders and 15 EU Commissioners visited the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv this week for meetings with Ukraine’s government. It was a historic summit, given it took place while the country is at war.

The EU promised a 10th round of measures against Russia to mark one year since the Russian invasion began. However, what Ukraine needs now more than visitors are weapons. So the panelists this week discussed Germany’s decision to finally send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine and argued it should have been done earlier.

The panelists also delved into the topic of migration and the fact that the EU still has no functioning migrant and asylum pact. 

EU heads of state and government will meet next week in Brussels to address this issue. Panelists welcomed the summit, but were skeptical it would reap results. The European Parliament hopes that EU governments will have a proper plan in place ahead of the European elections in 2024.

“I don’t think that next week’s Council will all of a sudden bring a magical solution to the migration issue. It’s a very complex issue”, Jeroen Lenaers told the panel adding that a holistic approach was needed. 

“So it would be not realistic to ask for some sort of a solution. What we do need is a strong commitment from the leaders to make sure that before the next European elections we will have a functioning Migration Pact”.

“It is not acceptable that in the European Union, after 9 years, we still don’t have a solution,” he said. 

For the Romanian MEP Vlad Gheorghe, there was no easy answer either but he was against the recent calls from the Austrian chancellor to use €2 billion of EU funding to build a wall between Bulgaria and Turkey.

“There is no silver bullet in this. And politicians like the Austrian chancellor, trust me, believe me, I have pretty much zero trust in someone like him, especially when he comes up with a magical solution like that. I think that’s just politics, and I think that will lead us to what has happened until now: just a pause until the next elections,” Gheorghe said.

Watch “Brussels, my love?” in the video player above.