ASSEDEL had the pleasure to interview Cecilia Strada, Italian MEP part of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats and former president of the NGO emergency.
The interview focused on the topic of migration central in the last plenary session of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. Members of the European Parliament voted to approve the first EU-wide list of “safe countries of origin” for asylum seekers, as well as new rules defining when a non-EU country may be classified as safe.
In line with the European Commission’s proposal, the initial common list includes Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, India, Kosovo, Morocco and Tunisia. The creation of this list will enable the accelerated processing of asylum applications submitted by nationals of these countries.
For Strada the approval of this list is a clear symptom of the worryingly direction that the European Union is taking. Where politics are dictated by propagandistic views rather than solid facts. She explains to us the importance of on-field experiences and empathy and urges citizens to take action, to make sure their voice is heard.
What direction do you think the European Union is taking on the topics of migration and asylum?
I think the EU is going in the wrong direction. Migrants are targets of the worst propaganda, they are used by the right and sometimes even centre right to promote their political agenda, to secure elections by winning the electors consent based on false information.
Let us think that everyone, from Confindustria, to the Italian Central Bank, to the European Central Bank, tells us that we need foreign workers, our economic system is based on this need. Most of the European countries are now facing a demographic winter, we need foreign workers. The question should be: how do we make sure that these workers can come here safely?
Instead, the European Union is going in the opposite direction. A propagandistic way based on convincing European citizens that migration is an emergency. A false myth that has been disproved by data collected by Frontex and Eurostat, that tell us that both arrivals and asylums requests are diminishing. This is not necessary a good thing, because this could mean that people are stuck in transit countries, in concentration camps in Libia, but there’s no emergency.
What really disgusts me is the dehumanisation of migrants, that are weaponized and considered as objects. The narrative is that there are enemy foreign powers that exploit migrants pushing them towards our borders. If this was the case, this for me would be one more motive to protect these people who have been exploited. Instead, European institutions believe it is a reason to build walls, to reject them.
Do you think people should worry?
I think we should look at what is happening in the USA and we should really ask ourselves: do we want the same? Because it seems to me that we are taking the same direction, with less visible violence of course, without shooting European citizens in the face, but the direction we are taking is the deportations’ one, and the rights reduction’s one. We should be careful, because when someone’s rights are denied, when we accept that people in power can decide to deny fundamental rights, it’s just a matter of time before others will see their rights taken away as well, just because someone in power said so.
So, the lesson that I’ve learned, is that either rights are guaranteed to everyone, or everyone is in danger, and unfortunately, we are going towards such a worryingly direction that we should all feel endangered. A consequence of the way that the UE is taking is the externalisation of the borders, of which the agreement between Albania and Italy is an evident example.
Do you think are we just at the beginning of the externalisation process? Are effective measures being taken to make the Albania centres functional in the future?
The Albanian centres are something different from what the EU is envisioning with this new path, which is focused on centres for repatriations in third countries which would then have full jurisdiction, while the centres in Albania remain under Italian jurisdiction. It is a big example of how things should not be done, since even if under the Italian jurisdiction, it is impossible to guarantee fundamental rights if the centre is outside Italian territory.
I’ve been to Albania to do three inspections of the centre, my colleagues from the Italian parliament and from the European parliament have also been there, and every time we have found serious human rights violations. The centres in Italy are also half empty, so, there was no need for the construction of the centre in Albania.
But anyhow, we, Social Democrats, will keep fighting for everyone’s rights and then we will see if the national judges will choose to act and go to the European Court of Juctice, to understand if all this that is happening is in line with the international law and with the values and principles included in the Chart for Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
In the context of your political work, how important is it to have personally experienced certain realities before speaking about them here in the European Parliament?
I feel very lucky to have entered the political environment after many years spent doing something else, working as a humanitarian operator, working for the protection of human rights on the field. I, for sure, have less experience in politics and in negotiations than my colleagues that have been doing politics all their lives, but I intend to learn. I have other skills, for example my nose is like a compass, because when you work on the field everything has a smell, you can touch things with your own hands, I even know the smell of a kid that has stepped on a landmine.
The same landmines that now different European countries want to start producing again. This is something that really makes me go crazy because it has been one of my first battles as an activist, I was 14 when I first started to advocate for the landmines’ ban. Now I wonder if the people who are pushing for them to be produced again have ever seen a person wounded by landmine, because I’ve seen hundreds of them on the field, and I know for sure that nothing good can come from landmines. The same is for the migration policies, have those people ever been at sea? One of the big advantages we have working at the European Parliament is having budget and the time to go work on the field.
I’ve been to Calais to see the people who try to cross the channel who live hidden trying to escape the brutalities of the French belt. I’ve been to Albania; I’ve been on a mission on the Island of Kos, in Greece, to look at the centre for deportations. I’ve been to visit CPR waving my European Parliament badge that grants us this amazing opportunity to go inspect these centres. The field for me is everything.
I told the world I come from, the associations, my ex-colleagues, my friends that still work on the field, to grab me by an ear an bring me back to sweep a boat deck if they see that I’m not using my nose anymore to distinguish between good and wrong politics.
In the work you do at the parliament with your colleagues, do you think there is a topic that you have at heart that is systematically excluded by the political debate?
I think what is lacking is looking at people as people and not as a mere category. If we don’t look at people as such, it is easier to have less empathy. The same is for the people in Palestine, we see them only as numbers. We should talk about people giving them names and faces, otherwise when we read “53 people dead in the Mediterranean” we see just a number, we turn the page and we don’t think about it anymore.
And then, of course, we should remove all propaganda from the discussion table. Everyone agrees that we must regulate the immigration flows, but not at the expenses of fundamental rights protection. The total closure of borders that the right, extreme right and the centre right want is not realistic, and even if it was it would not be desirable, we need foreign workers.
How do you think we should fight propaganda?
It is not an easy thing to do, because the concepts we need to explain are complicated while slogans are catchy even when fake. People who want to work honestly are in disadvantage, but we must keep fighting, maybe we should find a new way to communicate, but the only way to fight propaganda is with concrete facts.
To conclude, do you have a message of hope for young people?
Think of Europe as your home, think about how you want to design it. We are the European Union; we have direct elections for the parliament, the council is the expression of national governments, which are also elected by the citizens. We forget that people have power, we need to vote, to protest, to strike. We need to lower the average age of the European parliament, we need new ideas, new experiences. The EU is your home, if you don’t like how it is now, don’t move away, change it!
ASSEDEL, basé à Strasbourg et engagé dans la promotion des droits de l'homme et des valeurs européennes, continue de suivre et d'éclairer les évolutions qui façonnent l'avenir de la démocratie européenne et des relations internationales.