Luxembourg's foreign minister calls for unified European migration policy

BERLIN

Luxembourg's foreign minister on Monday called for a unified European migration policy aimed at paving the way for "legal migration."

Without a European migration policy, "this whole mess will continue," Jean Asselborn told the Berlin-based Deutschlandfunk broadcaster.

Without "legal migration," Europe will only remain “this terrible Australian model” of taking "illegal immigrants" to a distant island, Asselborn added.

The UK is reportedly contemplating relocating all illegal arrivals to the remote island of Ascension in the Atlantic Ocean.

"That is terrible, very terrible," said Asselborn. He said he hoped that there would soon be a European migration policy.

Asselborn criticized what he called "chauvinism" that sometimes overshadows British politics.

Migrants from North Africa and the Middle East have recently died trying to enter the UK illegally from France across the English Channel.

On Sunday, representatives of several EU countries, the EU Commission, Frontex, and Europol authorities discussed the repercussions of the latest refugee drama in the English Channel, where 27 people drowned.

France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany agreed to crack down on human traffickers. Britain was called upon to create legal migration routes and to make it more difficult to employ "illegal immigrants."

It was a fact that the migrants only wanted to reach the UK and did not want a court procedure in France, Asselborn noted.

The minister said family reunification also plays a role here, adding that if people with no prospects for life in their homeland aim at just one target country, it is "of course very, very difficult to manage."

Thousands of migrants from the Middle East and Afghanistan are stuck in the Polish-Belarusian border region amid freezing temperatures trying to enter the European Union.