Your contact for new licenses
The 26 candidates for the Commissioner posts have six days left. By next Tuesday at the latest, their written answers to questions from the specialist committees must be received by Parliament. There are now many officials working in the Commission who have studied law. And lawyers uphold the principle that a deadline is there to be exploited. Impatience is already spreading in the European Parliament because no texts have arrived yet.
The party families and national delegations are also nervous. Some French people fear that the Germans will have too many heads of cabinet in the new Commission. There are whispers of five to eight cabinet heads with a German passport. The candidate carousel is still spinning. Not even the heads of the transition teams have been chosen. The cards will only be played after the hearings, i.e. in mid-November at the earliest, when the cabinets are actually formed.
At least three German cabinet heads are currently on the horizon: Björn Seibert (Ursula von der Leyen), Michael Hager (Valdis Dombrovskis) and Bernd Biervert (Maroš Šefčovič). Two top officials with a Christian Democrat background and one with a Social Democrat background. It is quite possible that a fourth chef de cabinet for the Germans will be added. But there are unlikely to be many more.
It remains to be seen whether this will ease the French people’s stomach ache. At the moment, it is only foreseeable that they will fill the chief cabinet post of Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné.
Get the day off to a good start!
Originally, he was only supposed to be connected via video, but now Volodymyr Zelenskiy is traveling in person: Ukraine will be at the center of the discussion at the summit and Zelenskiy will present his “victory plan” to the heads of state and government, writes EU Council President Charles Michel in his invitation letter.
Another topic: the progress in implementing the G7 initiative to support Ukraine with a total of €45 billion by the end of the year on the basis of the frozen funds of the Russian state bank. Work is progressing well and the necessary texts will be ready by the end of the month, according to diplomats.
The funds are earmarked for macroeconomic aid, but also to support the Ukrainian armed forces and for reconstruction. Hungary’s blockade is not working, say diplomats. The Europeans’ pledge of €35 billion is guaranteed. However, the form in which the USA comes on board depends on Hungary: “We are doing everything we can to ensure that the USA can also contribute”, say diplomats about bilateral talks with Washington. Viktor Orbán will only decide after the US elections whether he wants to agree to an extension of the EU sanctions against Russian central bank funds from the current six months to 36 months.
As far as Ukraine and the Middle East are concerned, hardly any new accents can be expected from the upcoming summit. When it comes to Ukraine, a certain fatigue is noticeable. And when it comes to the Middle East conflict, the different positions between the member states are deadlocked. The perennial topic of migration is likely to take up the most space. No detailed resolutions are expected. However, Council President Charles Michel announced a “strategic exchange” in his letter of invitation, which will also focus on “concrete measures” to stem irregular migration.
Prior to the summit, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made an important announcement. In a letter to the 27 member states, she announced a draft law to speed up the deportation of rejected asylum seekers. Von der Leyen also spoke out in favor of deportation centers outside the EU “as a possible way forward”.
As an example, she cited the new center in Albania, which has been accepting boat refugees from Italy since Wednesday (see the following Analysis). Asylum procedures are carried out there in accordance with Italian law. The project was controversial from the outset. However, at the most recent Home Affairs Council, several EU countries spoke out in favor of such “return hubs” in third countries.
The Commission has recognized the “urgency”, said an EU diplomat. We need “positive and negative instruments” – i.e. incentives and sanctions. The toolbox is not yet complete. In addition, the implementation of the CEAS reform must be driven forward.
The reform of the European asylum system (CEAS) was adopted in the spring. It provides for the creation of new types of reception camps at the external borders – i.e. within the EU and not, as in Albania, outside. However, practical implementation is not expected until summer 2026. Many EU states are dissatisfied with this.
The reform must be implemented “swiftly”, according to government circles in Berlin. In doing so, “all legal leeway will be used” to apply the new EU rules as soon as possible. However, the German government is also calling for a more consistent implementation of the Dublin rules.
This applies above all to Greece and Italy – but these countries are reluctant. There could therefore be trouble at the summit. Greece is calling for a “European solution”. Bilateral agreements such as the one between Italy and Albania “will lead nowhere”, said Greek Migration and Asylum Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos.
Criticism also came from the European Parliament. “Von der Leyen’s initiative (on deportation centers in third countries, editor’s note) remains extremely vague and leaves open what exactly the Commission President actually means by so-called return hubs”, said SPD MEP Birgit Sippel (SPD), who helped negotiate the CEAS reform.
It is also not clear how this would make returns more effective, said Sippel. “It is therefore much more important to focus on finding agreements with countries of origin that are really in our mutual interest so that they can take back their own citizens more quickly and with less bureaucracy.”
Ahead of today’s EU summit, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed her sympathy for the migration agreement between Italy and Albania. “When it comes into operation, we will also be able to draw lessons from these experiences in practice.” However, many points already cast doubt on whether the new asylum centers will actually be groundbreaking and effective in regulating migration to Europe.
One day before the summit, on Wednesday morning, the first migrants were brought to Albania on an Italian navy ship. The 16 men come from Bangladesh (10) and Egypt (6) and were rescued on Sunday by the Italian coast guard a few kilometers off Lampedusa and were then not taken to the Mediterranean island, but to the “Libra”. The naval vessel had space for around 200 people, in addition to around 100 crew members. After a journey of around 50 hours, the “Libra” docked in the port of Shengjin in Albania.
Around a year ago, on Nov. 6, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Albanian counterpart Edi Rama signed the declaration of intent to set up the asylum centers in Tirana. At the facility in Shengjin, which is located just a few meters from the port, the migrants will only undergo initial checks – such as identification and a medical check. They are then taken to the center in Gjader, which is around a 30-minute bus ride from Shengjin.
On Friday, the Italian embassy in Albania announced that the two centers, which have been built in the port city of Shengjin and at a former military airport in Gjader, will go into operation. This step alone has been extremely delayed; the opening was planned for May of this year. The planned capacity has also not yet been reached: Originally, up to 3000 people a month were to be able to be accommodated. There is currently space for 880 people in Gjader.
The asylum applications of the 16 migrants are to be examined in Albania in accordance with Italian law and by Italian employees in a fast-track procedure. A maximum of four weeks is envisaged, including the possibility of appeal. On Italian soil, the processing of asylum applications takes longer than a year in most cases. Those whose applications are accepted are brought to Italy. If the application is rejected, the migrants are to be returned to their home country or to a safe third country. Whether this will be easier from Albania than from European soil still needs to be tested in practice.
Meloni is selling the centers as the long-awaited breakthrough in migration policy. This is not about “deportation” or “repatriation”, but about outsourcing the examination of asylum claims. Human rights organizations criticize this as a curtailment of the right to a regulated asylum procedure. However, the cost-benefit calculation is more than questionable. Italian media estimate the costs at around €800 million over five years. At the beginning of the construction work, it was expected to cost around €650 million. The newspaper “La Repubblica” assumes that the journey of the 16 migrants to Albania on the “Libra” alone cost between €250,000 and €290,000. In other words, between €15,000 and €18,000 per migrant.
“Giorgia Meloni’s government is raising taxes and wasting almost a billion euros on migrant centers in Albania”, criticized opposition leader Elly Schlein from the social democratic Partito Democratico (PD). Piefrancesco Majorino, PD representative for migration policy, said: “We are dealing with an ugly, cynical and expensive operation. It cannot be commented on otherwise and stands as a laboratory for everything that should not be done.”
The Greens in Italy have announced their intention to organize themselves in order to monitor the actions in the centers. A number of MEPs and parliamentarians will be on site “to ensure the transparency that has been lacking in this whole operation so far”, said Angelo Bonelli. The delegation would include MEPs Ilaria Salis and Mimmo Lucano.
Whether several thousand migrants can ever be subjected to the fast-track procedure in the camps as planned is also questionable. No migrants picked up by private sea rescuers are brought to Albania. Only those who have been picked up by Italian coastguard vessels or the financial police in international waters. Vulnerable people, i.e. women, children, injured people, sick people, torture victims or men from countries with a high asylum recognition rate, are also still being taken directly to Italy and to migration centers there.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi is even indirectly arguing that effectiveness is probably of secondary importance. The new system is primarily about deterrence, said the non-partisan minister. Those who have no prospect of asylum, i.e. a large proportion of migrants, will think twice about getting on a boat – only to end up in Albania.
p
Translation missing.
The current EU parliamentary session is just three weeks old and there are already signs of how the tone could change as the far-right political groups grow. Three political groups stand out for their frequent misuse of so-called Blue Cards. MEPs from the ECR, PfE and ESN are exercising their right to ask questions to speakers in plenary.
However, there is usually no question. Instead, the supposed questioners use the additional speaking time to personally condemn the MEPs – usually those from the Left, Green or Social Democrat camp. Moreover, the “question” often does not relate to the topic of the actual speech. In the age of social media, this approach is known as “trolling”.
There is clearly no interest in a political debate; it is all about defaming and discrediting political opponents. For example, critics of the Hungarian prime minister had to put up with numerous Blue Cards from Orbán fans last week.
Sharp attacks are by no means a rarity in political discourse and are not alien to MEPs in past parliaments. But it is striking how systematically the right-wing groups work together here. If a group’s Blue Card is rejected, a colleague from one of the other two groups jumps up and asks a politically irrelevant and thematically misplaced question on their behalf.
The ECR, PfE and ESN MEPs make up around a quarter of MEPs in the European Parliament. Many of them represent an anti-European stance, which they express through their democracy-destroying activities. This is a worrying development. Lukas Knigge
The 26 candidates for the Commissioner posts have six days left. By next Tuesday at the latest, their written answers to questions from the specialist committees must be received by Parliament. There are now many officials working in the Commission who have studied law. And lawyers uphold the principle that a deadline is there to be exploited. Impatience is already spreading in the European Parliament because no texts have arrived yet.
The party families and national delegations are also nervous. Some French people fear that the Germans will have too many heads of cabinet in the new Commission. There are whispers of five to eight cabinet heads with a German passport. The candidate carousel is still spinning. Not even the heads of the transition teams have been chosen. The cards will only be played after the hearings, i.e. in mid-November at the earliest, when the cabinets are actually formed.
At least three German cabinet heads are currently on the horizon: Björn Seibert (Ursula von der Leyen), Michael Hager (Valdis Dombrovskis) and Bernd Biervert (Maroš Šefčovič). Two top officials with a Christian Democrat background and one with a Social Democrat background. It is quite possible that a fourth chef de cabinet for the Germans will be added. But there are unlikely to be many more.
It remains to be seen whether this will ease the French people’s stomach ache. At the moment, it is only foreseeable that they will fill the chief cabinet post of Executive Vice-President Stéphane Séjourné.
Get the day off to a good start!
Originally, he was only supposed to be connected via video, but now Volodymyr Zelenskiy is traveling in person: Ukraine will be at the center of the discussion at the summit and Zelenskiy will present his “victory plan” to the heads of state and government, writes EU Council President Charles Michel in his invitation letter.
Another topic: the progress in implementing the G7 initiative to support Ukraine with a total of €45 billion by the end of the year on the basis of the frozen funds of the Russian state bank. Work is progressing well and the necessary texts will be ready by the end of the month, according to diplomats.
The funds are earmarked for macroeconomic aid, but also to support the Ukrainian armed forces and for reconstruction. Hungary’s blockade is not working, say diplomats. The Europeans’ pledge of €35 billion is guaranteed. However, the form in which the USA comes on board depends on Hungary: “We are doing everything we can to ensure that the USA can also contribute”, say diplomats about bilateral talks with Washington. Viktor Orbán will only decide after the US elections whether he wants to agree to an extension of the EU sanctions against Russian central bank funds from the current six months to 36 months.
As far as Ukraine and the Middle East are concerned, hardly any new accents can be expected from the upcoming summit. When it comes to Ukraine, a certain fatigue is noticeable. And when it comes to the Middle East conflict, the different positions between the member states are deadlocked. The perennial topic of migration is likely to take up the most space. No detailed resolutions are expected. However, Council President Charles Michel announced a “strategic exchange” in his letter of invitation, which will also focus on “concrete measures” to stem irregular migration.
Prior to the summit, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made an important announcement. In a letter to the 27 member states, she announced a draft law to speed up the deportation of rejected asylum seekers. Von der Leyen also spoke out in favor of deportation centers outside the EU “as a possible way forward”.
As an example, she cited the new center in Albania, which has been accepting boat refugees from Italy since Wednesday (see the following Analysis). Asylum procedures are carried out there in accordance with Italian law. The project was controversial from the outset. However, at the most recent Home Affairs Council, several EU countries spoke out in favor of such “return hubs” in third countries.
The Commission has recognized the “urgency”, said an EU diplomat. We need “positive and negative instruments” – i.e. incentives and sanctions. The toolbox is not yet complete. In addition, the implementation of the CEAS reform must be driven forward.
The reform of the European asylum system (CEAS) was adopted in the spring. It provides for the creation of new types of reception camps at the external borders – i.e. within the EU and not, as in Albania, outside. However, practical implementation is not expected until summer 2026. Many EU states are dissatisfied with this.
The reform must be implemented “swiftly”, according to government circles in Berlin. In doing so, “all legal leeway will be used” to apply the new EU rules as soon as possible. However, the German government is also calling for a more consistent implementation of the Dublin rules.
This applies above all to Greece and Italy – but these countries are reluctant. There could therefore be trouble at the summit. Greece is calling for a “European solution”. Bilateral agreements such as the one between Italy and Albania “will lead nowhere”, said Greek Migration and Asylum Minister Nikos Panagiotopoulos.
Criticism also came from the European Parliament. “Von der Leyen’s initiative (on deportation centers in third countries, editor’s note) remains extremely vague and leaves open what exactly the Commission President actually means by so-called return hubs”, said SPD MEP Birgit Sippel (SPD), who helped negotiate the CEAS reform.
It is also not clear how this would make returns more effective, said Sippel. “It is therefore much more important to focus on finding agreements with countries of origin that are really in our mutual interest so that they can take back their own citizens more quickly and with less bureaucracy.”
Ahead of today’s EU summit, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed her sympathy for the migration agreement between Italy and Albania. “When it comes into operation, we will also be able to draw lessons from these experiences in practice.” However, many points already cast doubt on whether the new asylum centers will actually be groundbreaking and effective in regulating migration to Europe.
One day before the summit, on Wednesday morning, the first migrants were brought to Albania on an Italian navy ship. The 16 men come from Bangladesh (10) and Egypt (6) and were rescued on Sunday by the Italian coast guard a few kilometers off Lampedusa and were then not taken to the Mediterranean island, but to the “Libra”. The naval vessel had space for around 200 people, in addition to around 100 crew members. After a journey of around 50 hours, the “Libra” docked in the port of Shengjin in Albania.
Around a year ago, on Nov. 6, Italy’s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her Albanian counterpart Edi Rama signed the declaration of intent to set up the asylum centers in Tirana. At the facility in Shengjin, which is located just a few meters from the port, the migrants will only undergo initial checks – such as identification and a medical check. They are then taken to the center in Gjader, which is around a 30-minute bus ride from Shengjin.
On Friday, the Italian embassy in Albania announced that the two centers, which have been built in the port city of Shengjin and at a former military airport in Gjader, will go into operation. This step alone has been extremely delayed; the opening was planned for May of this year. The planned capacity has also not yet been reached: Originally, up to 3000 people a month were to be able to be accommodated. There is currently space for 880 people in Gjader.
The asylum applications of the 16 migrants are to be examined in Albania in accordance with Italian law and by Italian employees in a fast-track procedure. A maximum of four weeks is envisaged, including the possibility of appeal. On Italian soil, the processing of asylum applications takes longer than a year in most cases. Those whose applications are accepted are brought to Italy. If the application is rejected, the migrants are to be returned to their home country or to a safe third country. Whether this will be easier from Albania than from European soil still needs to be tested in practice.
Meloni is selling the centers as the long-awaited breakthrough in migration policy. This is not about “deportation” or “repatriation”, but about outsourcing the examination of asylum claims. Human rights organizations criticize this as a curtailment of the right to a regulated asylum procedure. However, the cost-benefit calculation is more than questionable. Italian media estimate the costs at around €800 million over five years. At the beginning of the construction work, it was expected to cost around €650 million. The newspaper “La Repubblica” assumes that the journey of the 16 migrants to Albania on the “Libra” alone cost between €250,000 and €290,000. In other words, between €15,000 and €18,000 per migrant.
“Giorgia Meloni’s government is raising taxes and wasting almost a billion euros on migrant centers in Albania”, criticized opposition leader Elly Schlein from the social democratic Partito Democratico (PD). Piefrancesco Majorino, PD representative for migration policy, said: “We are dealing with an ugly, cynical and expensive operation. It cannot be commented on otherwise and stands as a laboratory for everything that should not be done.”
The Greens in Italy have announced their intention to organize themselves in order to monitor the actions in the centers. A number of MEPs and parliamentarians will be on site “to ensure the transparency that has been lacking in this whole operation so far”, said Angelo Bonelli. The delegation would include MEPs Ilaria Salis and Mimmo Lucano.
Whether several thousand migrants can ever be subjected to the fast-track procedure in the camps as planned is also questionable. No migrants picked up by private sea rescuers are brought to Albania. Only those who have been picked up by Italian coastguard vessels or the financial police in international waters. Vulnerable people, i.e. women, children, injured people, sick people, torture victims or men from countries with a high asylum recognition rate, are also still being taken directly to Italy and to migration centers there.
Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi is even indirectly arguing that effectiveness is probably of secondary importance. The new system is primarily about deterrence, said the non-partisan minister. Those who have no prospect of asylum, i.e. a large proportion of migrants, will think twice about getting on a boat – only to end up in Albania.
p
Translation missing.The current EU parliamentary session is just three weeks old and there are already signs of how the tone could change as the far-right political groups grow. Three political groups stand out for their frequent misuse of so-called Blue Cards. MEPs from the ECR, PfE and ESN are exercising their right to ask questions to speakers in plenary.
However, there is usually no question. Instead, the supposed questioners use the additional speaking time to personally condemn the MEPs – usually those from the Left, Green or Social Democrat camp. Moreover, the “question” often does not relate to the topic of the actual speech. In the age of social media, this approach is known as “trolling”.
There is clearly no interest in a political debate; it is all about defaming and discrediting political opponents. For example, critics of the Hungarian prime minister had to put up with numerous Blue Cards from Orbán fans last week.
Sharp attacks are by no means a rarity in political discourse and are not alien to MEPs in past parliaments. But it is striking how systematically the right-wing groups work together here. If a group’s Blue Card is rejected, a colleague from one of the other two groups jumps up and asks a politically irrelevant and thematically misplaced question on their behalf.
The ECR, PfE and ESN MEPs make up around a quarter of MEPs in the European Parliament. Many of them represent an anti-European stance, which they express through their democracy-destroying activities. This is a worrying development. Lukas Knigge