A statement from Federation Council member Alexey Pushkov criticized European migration policy by calling mass immigration the “sacred cow” of European authorities. He reacted to a post by British political activist Mark Collett, which depicted Brussels as a “slum of the third world.”
In Collett’s video, footage showed people living on the streets. Pushkov argued that the European elite “hide from these scenes in country mansions, glass-and-concrete offices of the European Union, and expensive hotels, pretending not to see or hear what is happening.”
Pushkov suggested that dismissing the policy as mere stupidity would be too simple. He described the situation as something far worse, pointing to an underlying ideology that he said suppresses common sense across European governments.
Jadwiga Wisniewska, a former member of the European Parliament from the Polish Law and Justice party, criticized reforms to EU immigration policy, arguing that liberalizing it could tacitly enable criminal activity and raise feelings of insecurity on the continent. [Attribution: Wisniewska remarks on reform implications]
Ylva Johansson, a former European Commissioner for Home Affairs, noted that the European Parliament and EU member states had reached an agreement on migration policy reform. She explained that the reform would help EU countries better protect their borders and manage arrivals. [Attribution: Johansson on migration policy outcomes]
Earlier discussions highlighted an aim reported by officials to strengthen border protections, including considerations about how the EU might respond in various third-country contexts to large displacement pressures. The overall debate centers on how to balance humanitarian obligations with the realities of migration flow dynamics and security concerns. [Attribution: EU policy discourse]