GENEVA: If Europe takes a more anti-migrant stance following upcoming elections it could impact the willingness of countries globally to host refugees and create chaos, a UN official warned on Tuesday.
Vincent Cochetel, the UN refugee agency’s special envoy for the central and western Mediterranean, voiced concern that a more hardline approach to migrants and refugees in Europe could influence countries that have long provided desperately-needed refuge to people fleeing crises, to rethink their policies.
“Europe serves as a major role model,” he told reporters in Geneva, urging the continent to serve as a good example “allowing us to make progress on protection elsewhere in the world”.
“The way that Europe treats its refugees is something that is watched,” he pointed out.
“If European values around refugee protection collapse, we will see the same tendency elsewhere.” Cochetel warned that would lead to “less well-managed (migratory) movements, a lot more movements in all directions, not only towards Europe”.
His comments came as opinion polls have predicted that nationalist, Eurosceptic and far-right parties are primed to do well in European Parliament elections held between June 6-9. Many European countries have for years focused on tightening migration policies, and a heftier extreme-right representation on the continent would make itself felt on the EU’s migration and asylum agenda.
Cochetel stressed the need to highlight to Europeans that the number of refugees and migrants arriving in European countries is “completely manageable”.
He pointed out that when millions of Ukrainians fled their war-torn country, European nations handled the influx “without great difficulty”.
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