Legal migration routes must continue to be developed and member states must think about the redistribution of refugees, as this is the only way to tackle migrant smuggling and manage migration effectively, Ylva Johansson, the European Commissioner for Home Affairs said in Strasbourg on Wednesday. Ms Johansson said that one million migrants a year is not as much of a burden for member states as some claim.
Johansson was speaking at a press conference on Lampedusa island, Italy, where hundreds of migrants arrive every day. The commissioner expressed the hope that a European agreement on migration could be reached in the shortest possible time. She called the EU interior ministers' meeting on the issue a great success, saying that only two countries – Poland and Hungary – said no to the distribution of migrants.
Ylva Johansson, who began her career in Sweden as a member of the Communist Party in the late 1980s and became a prominent figure in EU politics, was recently interviewed by Friends of Europe. She was asked to react to negative voices critical of migration.
Johnannson began her response by saying that there are always right-wing extremists, racists, xenophobic forces that would like to describe migrants as something abnormal. She added, however, that it is not at all abnormal. “We have a lot of migrants and a lot of [people with] migrant background and they are part of us.”
She then argued that Europe sees the arrival of over 1-1.5 million immigrants in a year, insisting that “without them, we would be much, much poorer," the V4NA international news agency reported earlier.
Elsewhere, she stated:
It is evident that voluntary solidarity is not enough, but a mandatory solidarity scheme is necessary.
As V4NA reported earlier, Ylva Johansson also lives a posh life compared to the average European citizen, and does not have to experience the impact of the migration crisis. Her assets declaration shows that she is not one of the most wealthy commissioners. However, she used to live in one of the most beautiful areas of Stockholm, on the banks of the Riddarfjarden River, and after a sham divorce from her husband, done presumably for political and economic reasons, she moved to a villa with its own marina on the outskirts of Stockholm.
