TERRAZA EUROPA EVENT ‘MIGRATION AND HATE SPEECH’

On 10 October, Javier Zarzalejos MEP met with more than 100 young people at the Terraza Europa event, moderated by ABC deputy director Juan Fernández-Miranda and organised in collaboration with Talent for the Future, to discuss issues such as the Migration Pact, the hatred that is being spewed on social networks against the migrant population and border control in the EU.

‘The implementation of the immigration and asylum pact is one of the European Union’s top priorities. It is a very difficult pact that establishes a new framework for regulating immigration and asylum. There is a whole series of application measures that the States are going to have to start to implement’, stressed Zarzalejos, for whom this pact aims to ensure that ’we have a much clearer legal framework, that there is legal certainty, that there is a set of safeguards for the fundamental rights of both immigrants and asylum seekers, that there are rapid procedures, that there are corridors of legality, that there are legal corridors for immigrants and asylum seekers, and that there are legal corridors for asylum seekers, that clearer corridors of legality are opened up, that there is cooperation with the countries of origin and transit, that the tragedies we are seeing are avoided through new resources, and that, on the other hand, integration processes are facilitated, which are essential for immigration as a whole to be able to settle in European countries without tension on any side’.

In his opinion, ‘immigration as a phenomenon has many facets, in many cases it is seen as a problem, but immigration is undoubtedly also part of the solution and above all it belongs to an absolutely natural dynamic’.

In this respect, the MEP stressed that ‘in Spain we can be quite satisfied to be in a country in which, according to the latest surveys by the National Institute of Statistics, almost 20% of the resident population was not born in Spain.  This means that we are by no means a closed society, beyond the specific cases that may exist, which I believe we have other indicators of social interaction between immigrants and Spaniards of origin that indicate that we are a society that facilitates integration as a whole’.

He also regretted that ‘there is a lot of misguided, manipulative discourse on immigration. Both the populist discourse that seeks closed, unviable, impoverished societies, as well as a pro-goodist discourse that believes it is doing immigration a favour when in reality it is painting a picture of immigration that is simply not real’.  ‘Faced with this, we must take a realistic view, an empathetic and compassionate view and, of course, an extremely alert view of what is one of the issues that brings us here today, which is not hate speech,’ warned Zarzalejos.

In relation to this, the MEP warned that ‘we should not trivialise the idea of hate speech to any hooligan or anyone who can insult at a moment’s notice. Hate speech is a structured argument that seeks to have a certain impact and, therefore, hate speech is promoted by some parties, by some organisations, and is also part of the editorial line of some media’.