Europe's migration policy has become 'hostage to political interests': EU official

By Agnes Szucs

BRUSSELS (AA) – The EU data protection chief on Tuesday said the bloc's migration policy has become “hostage to political interests” and employs double standards.

In a blog post marking World Refugee Day, European Data Protection Supervisor Wojciech Wiewiorowski warned EU agencies and EU governments to respect “fundamental rights provided by the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights.”

According to Wiewiorowski, the bloc’s “migration has become instrumentalized; hostage to political interests.”

“Border management differs across the EU: there are better and worse borders in the EU, with different standards, where the EU’s role differs, with different readings of the law,” he said.

Wiewiorowski reminded that the EU “has shown that we can” when it welcomed millions of Ukrainian refugees fleeing Russia's war, but “it has also shown that it depends” where and why the asylum-seekers are coming from.

Despite “unfavorable political realities,” he called on the EU to “continuously strive to uphold its values and principles at its borders” since it is “a legal obligation” and “not a question of generosity.”

His remarks come days after at least 81 people died after a fishing boat carrying asylum-seekers and migrants sank off the southern coast of Greece, one of the deadliest such disasters this year.

Many others were rescued, but the fatality count is expected to rise as survivors said the vessel was carrying more than 600 migrants, mainly from Pakistan, Egypt and Syria.

According to human rights watchdogs, the Greek coast guard might have ignored SOS signals of the boat while some survivors accused the Greek authorities to be directly involved in the accident.