EU Declares UN Migration Pact Legally Binding
After repeated assurances from German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the agreement is non-binding, the European Union changed course and declared the UN Migration Pact to be legally binding to every member-nation of the EU:
“UN Migration Pact ought to be legally binding for every EU member state including those which withdrew from the agreement.”
The agreement officially named “Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration” — includes a provision that reads:
“No country can address the challenges and opportunities of this global phenomenon on its own.”
The Pact also defined the situation of mass migration as “inevitable, necessary and desirable”.
Earlier this week, Austria and Hungary foreshadowed the events and warned that the Brussels summit plans to include the controversial UN Migration Pact into the legal framework of the EU by using backdoor channels.
Austria’s Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl said she was astonished to learn that the new document showing the Commission’s claim that the agreement was non-binding had apparently been reversed.
However, Austrian EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn dismissed Kneissl’s concern as a “storm in a teacup”:
“The position of the European Commission remained that the so-called UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly and Regular Migration was not legally binding.”
Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ)’s leader in the European Parliament, Harald Vilimsky, said the Commission report has proven that his party was right to lobby for Austria’s withdrawal from the UN agreement.
Vilimsky described the functions of the FPO as one that acts as “a protective umbrella for Austria and defends the country’s interests.” He also emphasized Kneissl’s statement that Austria is against any back door tactics that the European Commission plans to use to enforce the Pact on the member-nations:
“We insist on retaining national sovereignty on the issue of asylum and migration… It cannot be the case that there is a ‘right to migration’ [brought into EU law], because that would leave Europe with unsolvable problems.”
Kneissl’s Hungarian counterpart, Péter Szijjártó, echoed her sentiment:
“(The report) is tangible proof that the EU intended to make the UN compact mandatory across the entire bloc and Legal Service resorted to crafting lengthy and devious legal grounds in order to make the agreement legally binding.”
About The Author