France to push for action on migrant crisis during EU presidency

On Thursday French President Emmanuel Macron was quoted as stating that France will press for action on migration when it hosts the European Union presidency from January. He promised to immediately crack down on illegal migrant camps in northern France.

In six weeks, France will assume the rotating presidency of the European Union, just as the bloc faces a new crisis, with Belarus orchestrating massive migrant flows by flying the migrants in to Europe from the Middle East and pressuring them to attempt illegal border crossings into Poland and Lithuania.

Macron indicated that ministers would act in the coming weeks, while talking in an interview with the northern French regional weekly, la Voix du Nord.

For years, the bloc has been profoundly split on the subject, he remarked.

Since the 2015 migration crisis revealed that existing European Union migration rules were inadequate, the reluctant members of the European Union and the Mediterranean-coast countries have been at odds over where to locate people.

The eastern EU members are the most affected by the migrant crisis as these countries are where many of the migrants aspire to live and the Mediterranean-shore countries are where they primarily arrive.

Finding concessions to those divisions during the French European Union presidency will be even more difficult because the customary six-month mandate will be overshadowed by the French presidential elections, European diplomats commented.