One Dutch MEP compared the plans to the far right while Von der Leyen’s party called them ‘a good starting point’
The EU home affairs commissioner, Ylva Johansson, hopes migration will become just another “normal policy area”, even “boring”.
Since more than 1 million refugees arrived in Europe in 2015, migration has been neither “boring” nor easy for the bloc. Leaders have flung accusations at each other, exposing painful divisions. In 2015, Italy’s then prime minister told his fellow leaders they were “time wasters”, who didn’t deserve to call themselves Europeans. Central European countries accused their neighbours of trying to “blackmail” them.
