BRUSSELS — EU leaders were ticking through their agenda items with alacrity on Thursday. Rumors were circulating they might even cancel Friday’s meeting, having nothing left to talk about.
Then Viktor Orbán stepped in.
Our approach to migration is unacceptable, the Hungarian leader fulminated. Exactly, echoed the Polish prime minister, Mateusz Morawiecki. We won’t move forward with the summit’s final statement until our concerns are addressed, they vowed.
In the end, they got their way — kind of. The entire summit stalled as the leaders of France and Germany, plus European Council President Charles Michel, negotiated with Hungary and Poland. Eventually, everyone just gave up. Shortly after 1 a.m., EU leaders called off the summit and went home, vowing to try again Friday morning.
It was exactly what everyone had been hoping to avoid: Yet another migration mutiny.
The talks had been “difficult” and “complicated,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo conceded on his way out. “We hope the night brings some advice.”
In many ways, the failure to produce a final statement is merely cosmetic. The underlying reason behind Hungary and Poland’s 11th-hour intervention was a protest over a migration deal EU countries pushed through this month to relocate migrants across the Continent.
Statement or not, that deal will remain in place. Yet Hungary and Poland wanted to use the summit to express their discontent — and that, they certainly did.
The late-night obstruction, described to POLITICO by numerous diplomats familiar with the talks, is just the latest indication that migration is becoming an increasingly unavoidable subject at every EU summit. And with migrants continuing to arrive via dangerous Mediterranean routes and horrific tragedies like the recent migrant boat sinking off the Greek coast, the issue is not going away.
We’re always talking migration now
In the room, Dutch leader Mark Rutte suggested leaders discuss it again at their next summit, while De Croo argued it should simply always be on the agenda, according to one of the people familiar with the discussions who, like others, spoke anonymously to share details of the private talks.
Others pointed to the rise in anti-immigrant attacks in their home countries — including in places like Ireland which have traditionally escaped anti-immigration trends — as well as the rise in popularity of far-right parties, fuelled by xenophobic sentiment.
Migration has long been one of the thorniest issues for the EU. Since the 2015 migration crisis, the bloc has tried and failed to overhaul the bloc’s process for welcoming and relocating asylum seekers.
Until last month that is. In May, EU countries finally — after months of tense negotiations — reached an agreement that did both.
The deal, in a nutshell, would install a stricter asylum procedure at the border for migrants deemed unlikely to be accepted. It would also create a system that gives EU countries the choice of either accepting a certain number of migrants each year or paying into a joint EU fund.
Hungary and Poland detest the mandatory relocations and have vowed not to cooperate.
And at Thursday’s gathering, they also expressed anger that the deal was pushed through via majority support — not unanimity. They pushed to adopt a joint statement committing to making EU migration decisions only by consensus (even though the EU doesn’t require that).
The text of one potential compromise version of the statement, seen by POLITICO, calls for the EU to “find consensus on an effective asylum and migration policy.”
Despite Hungarian and Polish protestations, the deal is not going away.
“The migration deal stands,” Rutte said as he left the summit. “What has been the issue today was not the migration pact … but that Hungary and Poland don’t like the way the migration pact was decided.”
And that frustration spilled over into Thursday’s meeting.
“They’re so angry about this that they say that they want no conclusions [on migration] at all now,” Rutte said.
Moments after leaders broke up for the night, Orbán’s political director, Balázs Orbán, summed up the sentiment on Twitter: “Heavy fight against the pro-migration forces of Brussels!”
A sign of things to come
Summit organizers had been hoping to avoid such a prolonged conversation on migration, worried that it might turn heated.
They took several steps in the run-up to try and ensure the joint statement’s language placated everyone. To start, the drafts circulating ahead of time only indirectly referenced the migration agreement.
The drafts also tried to skirt another point of contention: a push from several hawkish countries to include a reference to finding “innovative solutions” on migration.
Though no one wanted to say it publicly, three officials familiar with the talks said the vague term included the prospect of sending asylum seekers to non-EU countries — a model akin to a controversial U.K. plan to fly asylum seekers to Rwanda. By coincidence, the U.K. proposal was dramatically struck down by the U.K. Court of Appeal Thursday just as EU leaders were arriving in Brussels.
Instead of mentioning the controversial phrase, drafters instead slipped in a reference to a letter EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the EU’s top executive, circulated to EU leaders this week, pledging that her European Commission was “ready to continue developing new ways of advancing on … objectives including through out-of-the-box thinking.”
The term “out-of-the-box thinking” — essentially a euphemism that keeps the door open for a range of migration options — got positive mentions from several leaders during Thursday’s meeting, according to the official familiar with the discussions.
One country that appeared satisfied all day: Italy.
Far-right leader Giorgia Meloni has successfully pulled much of the EU in her direction on migration and was the clear victor of the recent migration deal.
“It was a unique approach that fixed everyone’s problems,” she said as she arrived at the summit.
And De Croo, the Belgian leader, even praised her role as an intermediary with Hungary and Poland on Thursday.
But it remains far from clear if leaders will be able to reach a deal after a night’s sleep.
“There is really, really, really a desire to be able to come to conclusions,” De Croo stressed.
