Von Der Leyen: "conclude the reform of the Stability Pact by the end of the year"
“The reform of the Stability Pact must be concluded by the end of the year.
I am convinced that we will succeed."
The president of the said it EU Commission Ursula Von Der Leyen in the joint press conference with Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, at the end of the meeting of the College of EU Commissioners in Madrid.
Von der Leyen hoped that it would be possible to go during the semester of the Spanish presidency “forward with the pact on migrants” for it to be a reality “by 2024”.
“We have made good progress on migrants, now we need the final sprint to adopt the Pact before the end of the legislature. But we must also work on the implementation part, through agreements with transit countries. This is why as a Commission we have proposed an extra 15 billion euros as part of the review of the multiannual budget", he added.
On the topic of immigration, Sanchez he in turn noted: “I trust that we can close the agreement this semester because it would have a strong symbolic value”.
The setback suffered in the last European Council does not seem to have reduced Ursula Von Der Leyen's ambitions on the pact for migrants. Speaking in Madrid on the occasion of the press conference to present the Spanish presidency of the EU, the head of the European Commission has no doubts about the future of immigration reform. “It will be done – he said in the presence of the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez – all that is missing is one last effort”.
Perhaps that of the President of the European Commission is a “facade optimism”. Rarely does the head of an executive in office have an interest in admitting the failure of a reform. For Von Der Leyen, closing her mandate (which expires in 2024) with a new pact on migrants and immigration is an important objective. It would mean being able to write your name on a reform that has been awaited in the Old Continent for at least 32 years. That is, since the day after the approval of the Dublin Treaty in 1991, that text which was still in force already had several gaps.
Having therefore established that Ursula Von Der Leyen has every interest in not seeing the new pact definitively set aside, there are however objective elements found in her words that could explain her optimism. Between postponements, controversies and last minute agreements, the June 9 last However, a first draft of the reform had been approved.
That day in Luxembourg, the EU Interior Ministers approved two texts relating to the right to asylum and the reception system. Contained within are the new rules based primarily on the principle of compulsory solidarity. The latter is a compromise aimed at giving, on the one hand, support to the countries of first arrival such as Italy, Spain and Greece and, on the other hand, at not making relocations obligatory.
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