Six months of excuses from the PP to avoid the agreement on unaccompanied migrant minors | Spain

The agreement seems impossible. The 5,300 migrant minors hosted in the Canary Islands will continue to live in overcrowded centers and without adequate care. Also the 400 from Ceuta. The fourth face-to-face meeting between the Canary Islands, Ceuta, the PP and the Government to negotiate the redistribution of children who emigrate alone throughout the autonomous communities has exposed the PP’s lack of will to reach an agreement. After this two-hour meeting, the discourse has changed in the Canary Islands. The Government of Fernando Clavijo, which in recent months has openly criticized the central Government, is very upset with the Popular Party, with whom they govern in coalition on the islands. “The PP has come to break up the meeting. It is nonsense,” lament sources close to the island Executive. “At the meeting there was a block defending the reform. And then the PP,” government sources lament.

The PP does not plan to give in. The news about the Koldo case, and the direct accusation by the ringleader of the plot, Víctor de Aldama, to the Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Víctor Torres – who is leading the negotiations on minors – is the last of the excuses alleged by the Popular Party for not closing an agreement. that would alleviate the critical situation experienced by the territories most exposed to irregular immigration. The PP spokesman, Miguel Tellado, sat at the negotiating table this Thursday after having stood up in October, but did not return to negotiate. “The Government of Spain aims to normalize the activity of Torres, alias Rudolf, according to the plot,” said the parliamentary spokesperson after the meeting.

The meeting, in which Minister Torres was called; the president of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo (Canary Coalition); the president of Ceuta, Juan Vivas (PP), and the Minister of Children and Youth, Sira Rego, ended in fiasco. “It is nonsense,” they claim from the Canary Islands, where, this time, they point out “the PP’s lack of will to agree on anything” and “the waste of time.”

The conditions of the PP have been changing since last June. The party has been hardening its positions on immigration, while Vox puts pressure on it from the right in the autonomous communities so that it does not give in one bit. And although Tellado rejects that he is succumbing to any pressure, he maintains a maximal position: changing the Government’s immigration policy. The Government’s concessions have not worked and the confrontation is growing. The parties do not assume that the final point has arrived, but they recognize that they see it getting closer. This is the summary of six months of fruitless negotiations.

Julio. A month earlier, in June, the central government and that of the Canary Islands (made up of the Canarian Coalition and PP) had agreed to reform article 35 of the Immigration Law for the mandatory distribution of migrant minors between the autonomous communities. The bilateral pact upset the regional governments, although Alberto Núñez Feijóo guaranteed their “solidarity.” The discourse changed in just one week. Vox’s speech of fear led Tellado to defend the deployment of the Navy to stop cayucos. Then, Genoa demanded a sectoral conference on childhood to address the issue, but at that meeting only the voluntary distribution of a small quota that had already been agreed upon was achieved. On July 23, the PP, Vox and Junts voted in Congress against the reform. To resume the negotiation, the popular people then demanded the declaration of the migratory emergency throughout the national territory so that the communities can urgently process the contracts necessary for reception; that the Prosecutor’s Office guarantee that the minors transferred are undoubtedly minors and a multi-year contingency fund to finance the reception of the children “until their emancipation.” Tellado maintains to this day that financing continues to be a problem, while the ministers have renounced their initial postulates and maintain that there will be money to cover the communities’ efforts.

August. Without the understanding, the PP registers a proposal in Congress that adds new conditions. The focus is no longer on minors, but on border control. In parallel, Torres, Clavijo and Tellado meet secretly, a meeting that did not come to light until September. At that time, sources from Genoa assured that they would be open to reforming article 35 as long as La Moncloa accepted the proposal that Clavijo brought to that meeting, a formula to guarantee financing that meant that the central government would assume the expenses of any community that joined. was above 100% of its reception capacity. The proposal also contemplated exceeding 150% occupancy, a scenario in which the State would not only cover the costs, but would also be responsible for managing the reception. To calculate this occupancy, the PP asked that the places that each autonomous community had in March 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, be taken as a reference. This criterion places the occupancy threshold lower than currently, allowing several PP communities to declare themselves saturated.

The PP also demanded the convening of the Conference of Presidents, which will be held on December 13, and the declaration of a migration emergency.

September. Clavijo changes the tone against La Moncloa and brings closer positions with Génova. That month, the Canarian president signs with Feijóo a nine-point document on immigration policy, which requests, among other things, the deployment of Frontex, the reinforcement of Spanish agents in the countries of origin or the transfer of immigrants ( does not specify that they must be minor) to other European countries.

October. The PP abruptly breaks off the negotiations, alleging that the Spanish Government rejects aid from the EU and Frontex. The Government denies that it does not ask Brussels for help, but does not plan to include Frontex in the Atlantic patrol. Agents from the European border agency are already on the islands, but there are no agency ships or planes patrolling the waters as is the case in the Mediterranean. The department of Fernando Grande-Marlaska does not share this recipe to stop irregular immigration and defends that the presence of Frontex is only effective in the countries of origin, preventing departures and returning the members of the cayucos to the coasts from where they came, a formula that is still distant because it requires agency agreements with the countries involved. The ministry also considers that more ships and planes in waters under Spanish control may have the opposite effect to that desired. The Government’s proposal with which it calculated the places that each autonomous community must have and from then on to establish when they are saturated remains in the limbo of rupture.

November. The PP refuses to close a new meeting with Torres. Sources from Tellado’s team are already focusing their demands on Frontex’s request for collaboration and the activation of the European mechanism for the distribution of minors with other EU countries. Meanwhile, they accuse Torres of using the negotiation as a smokescreen against Aldama’s statements. Torres covers himself by writing a letter to the president of the Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, in which he puts in writing all the Government’s actions on immigration matters and requests “whatever help is necessary.”

December. The PP does not come down from its maximum position, it insists on the deployment of Frontex and the European distribution mechanism, but also on the change in the Government’s immigration policy, which is the cause, according to the party, of the current situation and calls for compliance of all the points of the agreement that Feijóo signed with Clavijo, demands that cannot be transferred in the reform of the law. On the other hand, the Government gives in and agrees to apply the occupation and financing criteria that the PP intended, that of March 2020, but it also defends that it is not willing to assume the “migration policy” of the popular ones.