The Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, said on Tuesday that her services are studying a request from the Spanish Government to allocate additional funds to manage the migratory flow in the Canary Islands, in light of the "difficult situation" facing the archipelago due to the "enormous" increase in irregular arrivals in recent months.
"Of course it is not sustainable to have people in the port but I think they are now opening new spaces and have approached the Commission asking for additional funds and we are studying it now," the Swedish socialist said at a press conference in Brussels, without giving more details about the aid requested.
The Commissioner also warned that, in her opinion, the vast majority of migrants arriving via the Atlantic route to the Canary Islands will not be entitled to asylum because they are migrants for economic reasons who are "not eligible" to receive international protection and therefore must be deported.
The Spanish authorities submitted a formal request to Brussels last Thursday to receive 43 million more from the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund to address the emergency on the islands, and the Community Executive is examining this request "urgently", according to sources from the Commissioner's team speaking to Europa Press.
The aim is to finance a six-month extension of the humanitarian assistance program in which the Red Cross participates in coordination with the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, which is scheduled until June 2021 and which Spain would like to continue until the end of that year.
With this extension of the program, the authorities would like to ensure humanitarian assistance, including healthcare and food supply, to the approximately 15,000 migrants who have arrived in the archipelago.
Currently, there are 5,500 migrants in the Canary Islands distributed in a total of 17 hotels, a provisional resource that the Ministry plans to stop using with the 7,000 future reception places that will be created with the 'Canary Islands Plan' announced a few days ago and that the Government plans to finance with these additional funds.
Other sources consulted indicate that Spain is finalizing a second aid request of up to 12 million, this time within the framework of the Internal Security and Borders Fund, for the new Temporary Care Center for Foreigners (CATE) in Barranco Seco.
Migrants without the right to asylum
In response to questions from the press, Johansson acknowledged that the situation in the Canary Islands is "very difficult" and said she is aware that the Government of Pedro Sánchez "has done a lot recently" to set up adequate migrant reception facilities, after the system was recently overwhelmed.
The Commissioner recalled that she was visiting the archipelago just a week ago with the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande Marlaska, and that she found that the situation is "very difficult" due to the "enormous increase" of migrants arriving via the Atlantic, a route that Johansson has described as "the deadliest to the EU."
"We do not know how many lives have been lost on that dangerous route," lamented the Commissioner, although she warned that a "huge majority" of the people who reach the Canary Islands irregularly "are not refugees, but economic migrants" who will not receive international protection.
Therefore, she stressed, "the emphasis must now be on speeding up the expulsions of those who are not eligible under international protection and also on acting against the mafias that traffic these migrants."
