French National Rally parliamentary leader Marine Le Pen has called the EU’s Pact on Migration and Asylum the “suicide of Europe,” and warned already in 2020 that it would mean 75 million more migrants for Europe. The controversial pact is now moving closer to becoming a reality, and various conservative and populist parties across Europe are scrambling to use any political means possible to block it from passing, including the Sweden Democrats.
The EU’s Migration Pact passed with a clear majority in the European Parliament last week with 420 votes to 130. SD politician MEP Charlie Weimers warned that the pact may force member states to accept migrants against their will; this is especially relevant for countries like Hungary, Czechia and Poland, which have all rejected mandatory migrant quotas.
“This pact’s solution is to force member states to accept migrants against their will,” said Weimers.
The Sweden Democrats are now threatening to withdraw their support from the conservative coalition government if Sweden votes for the migration pact. Although the Sweden Democrats are not officially a part of the coalition, the government relies on their votes to pass legislation — making the party essential to keeping the conservatives in power. Sweden, like every other country in the EU, is likely going to be tasked with voting for the pact in the European Council after the European Parliament vote.
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“The government must stop the ‘Migrant Pact’ drafted by Swedish Moderate Tomas Tobé in the European Parliament. If not, I find it difficult to see how the basis for our cooperation can be maintained,” Karlsson tweeted on Friday, April 21.
SD party leader Jimmie Åkesson also wrote that his party “stands for an independent and very strict Swedish migration policy.” He added that “the EU’s ‘migrant pact’ means the opposite in practice. We will not accept that Swedish voters’ power over migration policy is given away to other countries’ politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels. Period,”
The European Parliament does not have the final say on the controversial new law. In addition to the European Parliament, the European Commission and European Council must also approve the pact, but the EU commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, already signaled that the commission is likely to do so.
That leaves the European Council as the best hope for both those on the right and the left looking to stop the pact from becoming law. In the council, it will take a qualified majority of member states to pass In the past, it was enough for just one member state to veto, such as Hungary or Poland, but that veto will no longer be enough.
Countries like Hungary and Poland are virtually guaranteed to vote against the pact, and Hungarian politicians have already signaled their unhappiness with it. At the same time, countries like Germany, France and Spain are expected to vote for the pact. If it passes, European countries opposed to mass immigration may have little recourse when it comes to mandatory migrant quotas, which means former strongholds against the Great Replacement, such as Hungary, could soon be saddled with thousands of migrants the country has no desire to take in.
