Valérie Pécresse thought she would reveal figures “hallucinating” on immigration. She actually made a big mistake. Questioned on Sunday February 6 on France 5, the candidate Les Républicains in the presidential election wanted to prove that the external borders of Europe were not protected enough by affirming that “It’s around 40 million migrants this year who have returned to Europe, without going through these authorized crossing points, that is to say who have had no control”.
“L’#Europe is a power. She has the right to choose who she welcomes. To protect its external borders, the construction of walls should not be ruled out. Today we have a migratory berezina.”@vpecresse#Presidential2022 #cdanslair #migrants #Immigration pic.twitter.com/8G3Gf0uZPZ
— C in the air (@Cdanslair) February 6, 2022
As the official website of the European Union indicates, it is not 40 million, but 2.7 million people who immigrated legally to Europe in 2019, which is fifteen times less than the figure put forward by Valérie Pécresse. Regarding illegal immigration, it is, by definition, difficult to assess. The European border guard agency, Frontex, however, indicated in a press release published at the beginning of the year that it had intercepted 200,000 illegal migrants last year. We therefore remain extremely far from the tens of millions of migrants mentioned by Valérie Pécresse. The figure put forward by the candidate seems all the more surprising since on 1 January 2020, the European Union had a total of 23 million citizens of non-EU countries on its soil (5.1% of the total population of the EU ).
Valérie Pécresse’s campaign team confirms to us that candidate LR was in fact indeed mistaken and would have committed “an inaccuracy of language”.
Her team explains that Valérie Pécresse was actually referring to the declaration of a European commissioner published on February 3 in the newspaper Le Figaro. The European Commissioner for Home Affairs, Ylva Johansson, explained that “LLast year, 39 million people arrived in the Schengen area without having been checked in the SIS database, which notably lists the people wanted”.
But Valérie Pécresse seems to have very badly interpreted this statement. First of all, the “39 million people” mentioned are not necessarily “migrants”. It can be anyone who has set foot on European soil: a tourist or a person coming for work, for example. Moreover, it is not because a person was not checked in this SIS file that he was not checked at all. The CNIL explains that the purpose of the SIS (Schengen Information System) is “to ensure a high level of security within the Schengen States in the absence of internal border controls, by allowing the competent national authorities, such as police forces and border guards, to enter and consult alerts concerning people or things”. It is, concretely, a security tool in which there are reports of missing or wanted people, but also of objects such as stolen cars and weapons or even counterfeit notes in circulation.
The Commissioner therefore simply regretted that this file was not consulted more by the Member States.