Vox has brought to Strasbourg its maximum anti-immigration postulates in the electoral debate on foreign policy and the European Union (EU) held at the headquarters of the European Parliament and has defended that “the motto high walls make good neighbors must govern in the relationship between Spain and Morocco.
Vox’s proposal, flatly rejected by the PP and PSOE in the debate organized by EFE, dates from 2019 when Santiago Abascal’s party brought its proposal to Congress to build an “impassable wall” in Ceuta and Melilla whose surveillance depended on the Army.
Popular and socialists have stood up to the proposal made by the MEP and national spokesperson for VOX, Jorge Buxadé, denouncing, among others, that “with that logic” the European Union would never have been “built”.
“Establishing walls is not the way to get along with countries that necessarily have to admit illegal immigrants,” concluded the popular MEP, José Manuel García-Margallo, who stressed the need to collaborate with the countries of origin of irregular migration to have an “efficient return and readmission policy”.
The representative of the PSOE, the MEP Nacho Sánchez Amor, also criticized Buxadé for describing the influx of migrants to Europe as a “true invasion”, recalling that Spain was also a country of origin for emigrants to countries like Germany a few decades ago.
“People are looking for a better life and they have every right to do so,” said Sánchez Amor, who urged not to “criminalize these movements”, while the Podemos MEP integrated into the Sumar platform, Idoia Villanueva, asked to put aside the “xenophobia”.
The representatives of PSOE and PP agreed on various points of migration policy, such as the differentiation between the right to asylum and migration for economic reasons, and García-Margallo highlighted the “coincidences” between both parties in this area.
