Lavrov blames EU’s open-door policy for migration crisis

Sergei Lavrov says the European Union’s doors have not merely been open, but “wide open,” allowing anyone to enter and producing the migration crisis now confronting the bloc.

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Pay attention to the migration crisis caused by a policy not merely of open doors, but of doors wide open, so that anyone can come.

The Russian foreign minister made the remarks at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, after Spain accused Russia of possible involvement in a disinformation campaign linked to the migration crisis in Ceuta. Lavrov argued that the EU had moved far from the economic association that attracted people seeking opportunity two decades ago.

He said the open-door policy initially reflected European humanism, but had since become a domestic political problem in countries including Germany and Britain. Migrants, he claimed, were becoming a physical majority in some places, while taxpayers among the local population were being required to support them. He also included Ukrainian citizens who fled their country after the start of Russia’s “special military operation,” saying that benefits they received in some EU countries exceeded unemployment payments available to those countries’ own citizens.

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It is clear that all this creates advantages, but these advantages are now being seriously undermined.

Lavrov said the policy was provoking protests and discontent inside the EU and eroding its economic identity. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez, speaking to SER radio, had said Russia and Israel might be spreading falsehoods to destabilize Spain because of its “brave” foreign-policy positions on the war in Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia’s Foreign Ministry described the irregular arrival of migrants in Ceuta in July as the “collapse of the European Union’s migration policy.”

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It is obvious that if Russia gets involved in spreading disinformation on this issue, or Israel also spreads disinformation by criticizing the Spanish government, it is not because they are concerned about migration in Spain or Europe, but because of the political positions we are taking, which I believe are brave, regarding the genocide in Gaza and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.