Debate contributions by Damien CARÊME

Mr President, the United States has violated international law in Venezuela for vile economic interests; Genocide continues in Gaza; Sudan is dying; in 2025 the 1.5 degree warming threshold was exceeded for the third time; the planet has entered the era of global water bankruptcy; floods, droughts and heatwaves in 2025 caused EUR 43 billion in losses for Europe; every year more than 3 200 Europeans lose their lives at work: there is no shortage of emergencies, and yet what topic does the EPP choose as a topical debate? The migration issue. Banco! For what results? In Calaisis, where I served as mayor for 18 years, far-right activists from Great Britain are stepping up racist raids against refuge seekers. Intimidations, dirty water supplies, and desecration of city walls with racist and hateful graffiti, swastikas. That, ladies and gentlemen of the EPP and LR, is what your shallot race with the far right produces, the one that will give the illusion of action and the most despicable and inhumane solutions. Violence, inhumanity, fractured societies, but zero solutions. In addition, you propose making official development aid or even humanitarian aid to third countries conditional on the management of their borders, on their cooperation on return, on the creation of hotspots on their territory, with great disregard for the fundamental rights of exiles. You even allow children from 6 years of age to be locked up. But for whom are these elected officials who want to regain control of migration? What a pretense! Because, ladies and gentlemen, we do not take back control of migration, and we certainly do not do so by lowering ourselves to the worst vileness. Mr Weber, by wanting too much to dominate, to win at all costs, through the union of the right to the extreme, you think you will eventually reign, but it will then be on a field of ruins. To this I will continue, together with my group, to stand in solidarity and humanity with those seeking refuge. Together with my group, I will continue to defend European values, which increasingly seem to be lacking in you.

Madam President, Commissioner, the far right dreamed of it; you did. In 2024, revelations about the AfD’s planned remigration scandalised and put one million Germans on the streets. Today, when all eyes are on the defence and rearmament of Europe, you are presenting us with a draft regulation that is nothing more or less than the legislative concretisation of this xenophobic delirium: deportation. The Pact on Migration and Asylum, the pact of shame, which contains very harsh provisions on return, is not yet implemented, as it is already reinforced by more inhuman and unworthy proposals. In recent weeks, European leaders have been waving at European values in the face of a Trump who would trample on them. But what European values are we talking about? The violation of the fundamental rights of the most vulnerable? Detention of refuge seekers, including young children? Forced eviction of people fleeing war or misery in return centres? Outsourcing our human and legal obligations to third countries, which will be described as ‘safe’ according to our own interests? Who in the end tramples on these European values, Commissioner? From Dublin to the proposed return to the Pact on Migration and Asylum, European asylum policy has nothing to envy of Donald Trump’s massive deportation delusions.

Mr President, Commissioner, today the PPE imposes on us yet another debate on security at our borders and the strengthening of Frontex, as if migration were the mother of all evils in Europe. It shares this sickly obsession with the Commission and the Member States. So let's stop this unnecessary as well as inefficient overbidding. Instead, let us worry about what has become of Frontex in 20 years. Frontex embodies the failure, but above all the excesses, of our ultra-safe and deadly migration policy. With an annual budget of 959 million euros, Frontex is a monster agency. Its activities and resources have developed as exponentially as its serious dysfunctions. We have allowed Frontex to break free from the rule of law with impunity and to escape almost all control. This agency is unable to prevent the worst human rights violations, when it is not itself directly involved in these violations. We must put an end to this flight forward and this Parliament must play its full part in this necessary start. As for the agreements with third countries, Commissioner, they are shameful, whether with Libya or Tunisia. All the reports of the NGOs, but also of the UN denounce them. So, with all due respect to the EPP and its allies, we will never compromise to ensure that human rights are respected.