Should Europe have a common migration policy? European Justice and Home Affairs ministers are meeting on 3-4 February in Lille, France, to discuss migration. Ahead of the meeting, French President Emmanuel Macron has called for much closer coordination of migration policies through regular ministerial meetings, similar to Eurozone meetings.

One of the items on the agenda in Lille will be the proposed EU Pact on Migration and Asylum, which includes measures to reduce unsafe, irregular routes and instead promote safe, legal pathways. The proposals have received a mixed response from civil society groups, and previous attempts at EU migration reform have stalled. Nevertheless, Macron’s government hopes to “regain confidence in our ability to together define a truly effective European migration policy”.

What do our readers think? We had a comment from Agnes:

[The European Union should] reduce irregular migration… creating legal migration routes into the EU…

To get a response to Agnes, we spoke to Sammy Mahdi, Belgian Secretary of State for Asylum and Migration and European Young Leader 2018.

For another perspective, we also put Agens’ comment to Giorgos Stefanidis, Local Coordinator of ARSIS (Association for the Social Support of Youth), a Greek NGO (and a member of our Debating Europe Community Partner network) providing and promoting social support for disadvantage young people, including from migration and refugee backgrounds.

Interested in the topic of legal migration routes into the EU? Check out the Africa-Europe Foundation’s recent event, “Migration and Mobility in the Africa-Europe partnership: Leading the way to the AU-EU summit”, which explored the drivers of intercontinental migration and looked at the best ways to both strengthen intra-continental mobility in Africa, and create accessible routes for regular intercontinental migration.

Would making regular migration easier reduce irregular migration? Should Europe have a common migration policy? Let us know your thoughts and comments in the form below and we’ll take them to policymakers and experts for their reactions!