“To the Stars” is the name of a concert, performed on Sunday evening, in which the “Songs for Days to Come” by the Syrian composer Kinan Azmeh and Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony form a symbiosis, a vision of the future of the connection of all people. The latter makes a mockery of the EU Migration and Asylum Pact, the reform of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) decided in 2024, which is to be implemented by June 12th. Luxembourg’s consultative human rights commission has criticized the draft law, which is up for vote in the Chamber of Deputies this week. Above all, the restrictive implementation of EU requirements is a serious issue.
“Screenings” and rapid procedures at the external borders, detention-like accommodation in “closed control access centers”, a lack of legal assistance during the asylum procedures and the legalization of pushbacks are features that will shape how refugees are dealt with in the EU. Even if the EU states have agreed on a solidarity mechanism after years of disagreement over the redistribution of asylum seekers, the “cradle of human rights” seems to have only one priority, according to the Augsburg political scientist Vanessa Barisch: “to reduce the number of asylum seekers, regardless of whether it is in accordance with international human rights or not”. Around 75 years after the adoption of the Geneva Refugee Convention, European refugee protection is only a “ruin,” says Barisch. The EU no longer pays much attention to the requirement not to turn away asylum seekers. With the CEAS reform, the breach of the Geneva Convention would be incorporated into applicable law. In the future, the EU will be able to override human rights at the push of a button by means of a crisis regulation if refugees could pose a “hybrid” threat.
Luxembourg has welcomed refugees of various origins in recent decades. Looking back, one should remember, for example, the people who fled the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile in the 70s and found refuge in this country, the boat people from Vietnam, the refugees from the Balkan wars of the 90s – and finally, in the new millennium, the asylum seekers from Syria, Eritrea and Iraq, among others, as well as those who have fled the war in Ukraine since 2022. Asylum policy has always been based on implementation influenced by European directives. The foundation for integration policy measures was laid in 1993 in the law on the integration of foreigners, the comprehensive asylum law dates from 2006, the law on international and temporary protection of December 2015 followed a directive from June 2013. The right to asylum was also enshrined in the constitution (Art. 32). Integration policy and refugee aid have been institutionalized: the Office luxembourgeois de l’accueil et de l’intégration (OLAI), created by the Integration Act of 2008, was replaced by the Office national de l’accueil (ONA) in 2020.
For several years now, there has been a backlash in asylum policy (not only) in Europe. This is now expressed in the Migration and Asylum Pact. Conservative, right-wing populist and right-wing extremist circles have built a horror structure that distorts the entire issue of flight and migration. There were agreements and meetings between the said political groups for the vote in the EU Parliament on the return regulation. According to the regulation, rejected asylum seekers can be deported to supposedly safe third countries with which they have never had to do anything before – or where political dissidents are in prison, such as in Morocco, Tunisia or Turkey. In the “return hubs” the security authorities of those countries then take over the dirty work for the Europeans. Instead of “All men become brothers,” as it says in Beethoven’s setting of Friedrich Schiller’s “Ode to Joy,” Europe’s stars will burn out in this way.
