Nigel Farage has pledged to shut down the asylum system for five years and deport 90,000 applicants immediately.
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Money and how to make more of it are among the top issues to be discussed among EU leaders as they gather for a two-day summit in Brussels, while they also struggle with ongoing problems on Ukraine, the Middle East, migration, defence, and new rules for EU-hopefuls, such as Montenegro.
The official talks kick off on Thursday (15 October) on how to make the 27 EU states more competitive in a turbulent world dominated by US tariffs, Chinese innovation, and Iran-war linked chokeholds in the Strait of Hormuz, which have forced the G7 wealthy nations to release 100m barrels of diesel and crude oil.
Gas prices have risen by 140 percent since the end of February with imported fossil fuels now costing an extra €100bn, says the European Commission.
In Europe, a grand scheme, a so-called “One Europe, One Market”, aims to spike European fortunes by saving an estimated €37.5bn for EU businesses by 2029.
The drive is part of a larger initiative to cut red tape and remove internal market barriers, including the eventual launch of a so-called EU Inc.
Ireland, which is currently steering the EU’s rotating presidency, had already announced that the summit would start with the competitiveness theme. And leaked draft conclusions, seen by EUobserver, lead with a sales pitch to step up ambitions over the ‘One Europe, One Market’ proposal.
It also gives a nod to the German car industry, by citing efforts needed to stop China from making too much money off Europeans. The goal is to get Europeans to spend more on European products, even if they are more expensive and less innovative.
The ‘more money’ talks dovetail into how to spend it (or not) in the EU’s next long-term budget, spanning 2028 to 2034.
António Costa, the president of the European Council, is hoping for an agreement of the nearly €2 trillion budget before the end of the year. People need predictability and stability, he said, in a invitation letter sent to the 27 EU states.
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The EU’s border agency, Frontex, shared coordinates of an overcrowded and partly deflated boat in the Mediterranean sea with the Libyan coastguard and then watched them run it over.
The boat was carrying 27 people, including children.
The findings, by Frontex’s own fundamental rights officer, described an incident that took place on 19 June 2026.
And this was just a tiny part of a wider pattern of violence by the EU-backed Libyan coastguard, which has also shot at or near civil rescue vessels.
No one was killed in the June event. But people were tossed into the water. Others, pulled onto the Libyan vessel, were then beaten by Libyan uniformed officers.
Frontex had issued a Mayday relay and then shared the sightings by email with the Libyan rescue centre.
No vessels were reported to be in the vicinity, but the Libyans showed up 90 minutes later.
The internal Frontex findings highlight ongoing tensions in the agency over sharing rescue coordinates with the Libyans in the name of saving lives.
“Saving lives is the absolute sort of absolute right that people have,” Hans Leijtens the agency’s director, told EUobserver earlier this year.
“And it’s our job to contribute to that, and if that sort of starts with looking at which part of the Mediterranean ship is sailing, and if it’s a north African country, we all have to inform the authorities there,” he added.
But his own rights officer also notes that the botched rescue on 19 June amounted to a violation of the right to life, citing article six of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
He says the standard is not simply whether the migrants were ultimately rescued, but if the operation was planned and executed to minimise risks to human life.
In this case, the Libyans violated that right among others, he says. Frontex did not reply to the findings in the report, as of publication.
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There are more than 800 surveillance towers located along U.S. borders, a number that is expected to triple in the next decade. These towers, according to a government accountability report, “detect items of interest, such as people.” But interest can be fickle. As part of “Dying on Camera,” a sprawling package of features co-published by the MIT Technology Review and Times of San Diego, Lillian Perlmutter reports on the death of Graciela Gómez Hernández, one among hundreds of migrants whose final moments seem as though they should have been witnessed. “The proximity of so many deaths to high-resolution cameras leaves two distinct possibilities,” Perlmutter writes. “Either the system didn’t detect these people in distress, or it did detect them—and officials offered no response. “
Surveillance towers have proliferated in recent years, as contractors added newer camera systems that use artificial intelligence to distinguish border-crossers from other people and animals, and track their movements, at an overall cost of more than a billion dollars. Yet as the cameras scan the terrain, migrants continue to die in plain sight.
Twelve years ago, EU summit leaders announced they had a strategy to tackle unprecedented migrant arrivals.
Next week, they will meet again in Brussels and to tell us something similar.
We journalists will report on the latest twists and turns, hoping to get some sort of angle that hasn’t been covered. But the reality is that our leaders have broadly failed.
Dozens of EU summit conclusions have been published since 2015, when one around million Syrians arrived in Europe to seek protection.
We need stronger external borders to preserve the Schengen passport-free zone, they said. We need partnerships with foreign states to save lives. We need to step up deportations. We need a European solution.
All of these ideas and strategies have found a home in council conclusions, in various iterations, since 2015. All of them.
Some have actually panned out, including an EU migrant swap deal with Turkey and other deals with autocrats in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere. Others like internal reforms on asylum have also been delivered.
Yet the sense of urgency to tackle these issues continues because there is an obvious disconnect between what has been delivered, the promises made and the lived experience on the ground.
People still come. Some 80,000 arrived in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta end of July alone.
Many are still fleeing violence, war and economic hardships. Others are lured by the promise of labour in Europe by Europeans willing to exploit them.
I remember meeting a group of boys from Bangladesh on the Ocean Viking, freshly rescued in the middle of the night, asking when they would be able to start working in Italy.
One of them was still shaking with fear and sobbing, following a near death experience.
The European Commission is now claiming that the drop of irregular arrivals is due to their migration policy reforms, as if the fall of the murderous Assad regime in Syria had no discernible impact.
Perhaps some of that is true. But there is no disputing that Syrians accounted for over 100,000 irregular crossings in 2023, a year before Assad fell. It then dropped to around 6,000. Today, it is around 1,000, according to Frontex.
At some point, one has to wonder if these conclusions, repeated ad nauseam, is nothing but political theatre by a leadership that has run out of ideas.
EU leaders meeting next week in Brussels for the usual post-summer European Council are rehashing conclusions on migration, echoing almost word-for-word statements since at least 2015.
“The European Council has developed a strategy aimed at stemming the unprecedented migratory flows Europe is facing,” they announced in December 2015, following a summit.
“It is indispensable to regain control over the external borders,” they also said, noting the perceived threat to the EU’s internal border-free Schengen zone.
And they voiced fear over the low number of deportations, insisting on “concrete measures to ensure the actual return and readmission of people not authorised to stay.”
Eeleven years later and the 15 October summit in Brussels next week is now asking almost the same thing, including to what extent previous conclusions on migration have been implemented.
Although draft conclusions can change, and likely will, the current wording essentially repeats the same demands spanning over 50 EU summits since at least 2015, when over a million Syrians entered Europe to seek protection.
Out of the 52 published conclusions since 2015, over half dealt with migration in some shape or form. The latest draft dated 5 October and seen by EUobserver is among those.
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A second village is to hold a vote on whether to have a referendum to leave the UK in protest over plans to create a camp to house 1,250 asylum seekers in a former RAF base nearby.
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The locking down of Gosport to protect illegal migrants shows beyond doubt that Britain is a two-tier state, says Paul Birch, where locals must produce ID while illegal migrants are escorted away in luxury coaches.
The post The Locking Down of Gosport to Protect Illegal Migrants Shows Beyond Doubt That We Live in a Two-Tier State appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Two human rights defenders are facing a Greek court in Rhodes and 20 years in jail over allegations they belong to a criminal organisation.
The hearing targets Norwegian activist Tommy Olsen and Panayote Dimitras, a legal administrator and representative of the NGO Greek Helsinki Monitor.
“They want to shut me up because what I’ve been doing over the last six to seven years is revealing their wrongdoings,” Olsen told EUobserver on Monday (5 October).
The hearing, which is taking place on Tuesday, is years in the making, following repeated attempt by Greek authorities to punish the pair for helping people seek asylum on the island of Kos in 2021.
Both deny any wrongdoing and Amnesty International earlier this year said the two were being prosecuted for their human-rights work of documenting serious rights violations.
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Police have 'locked down' an entire town to stop unrest by setting up a dispersal zone covering the whole of Gosport following protests sparked by the arrival of a migrant boat using a 'new route' from Normandy.
The post Police Lock Down Entire Town to Stop Unrest as Nearly 150 Small-Boat Arrivals Use ‘New Route’ to Land in Gosport appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Nearly all women who attempt to reach the UK in small boats from northern France are raped on their journey, Shabana Mahmoud, the Home Secretary, has said.
The post Nearly All Women Who Try to Reach UK in Small Boats Are Raped During Their Journey, Says Shabana Mahmoud appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
British taxpayers have already paid for nearly 1,000 free hijabs for Channel migrants this year, with the total likely to hit 1,500.
The post UK Hands Out More Than 1,000 Free Hijabs to Channel Migrants at Taxpayer Expense appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Five more charities in receipt of three quarters of a million pounds of public funds have been added to Charlotte Gill's list of taxpayer-funded asylum charities which are assisting illegal migration to the UK.
The post Five Examples of Taxpayer-Funded Asylum and Migration Charities appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
When CofE bishops in London read in a Left-wing rag that anti-small boat activists were attending church, they immediately released a statement. Where are all the statements about Left-wing activists, wonders Julian Mann.
The post Are People Who Are Concerned About Illegal Immigration Welcome in the Church of England? appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Statistics on the composition of the population are much more meaningful than those on the level of immigration per se. Unfortunately, we only get decent estimates of the composition every ten years.
The post The Problem With UK Immigration Statistics appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Brussels (European Newsroom) – The European Union should improve how it detects and connects early warnings at its external borders after the mass arrival of migrants in the Spanish autonomous city Ceuta in July, said the chief of the EU border agency Frontex, Hans Leijtens, while insisting that responsibility for border protection must remain with member states.
“I think we should improve our situational awareness as Europe, and Frontex can play an important role in that,” Leijtens told journalists of the European Newsroom network in Brussels.
He said a broader picture could be built from satellites, aircraft, observers on the ground and information from social media. Much of the information was already available, he said, but needed to be better connected.
The remarks come as the European Commission floated plans for a Frontex rapid-response team that could deploy within 24 hours in a crisis. The team would still be sent only at the request of a member state, according to an action plan presented by EU migration commissioner Magnus Brunner in late September. The plan also envisages a larger role for Frontex in returns.
Leijtens said he did not expect a new Frontex mandate to change the basic division of responsibility. “There I would find it difficult because not only in our mandate but in general protecting European borders is a member state responsibility and we can’t take over responsibility,” he said.
He described the events in Ceuta as more of a public-order issue than a conventional border incident. Ceuta, a Spanish exclave in northern Africa, saw a sudden mass crossing from Morocco on July 30–31, 2026, triggering a diplomatic dispute among EU countries. Spanish estimates rose from about 72,000 to 80,000 arrivals, while Morocco cited about 40,000. Many people returned before being registered, making the final total uncertain. According to news reports, some 83 people died, and the crisis reignited debate over EU border control, asylum rules, solidarity and Frontex’s role.
The episode raised a further question for the EU’s early-warning debate: whether the challenge was detecting the signals, sharing them or responding to them.
Leijtens said the deaths were horrifying and should be prevented. “The fact that so many people lost their lives is absolutely horrifying and something we should prevent.”
The European People’s Party leader Manfred Weber had called for Frontex to take command in a crisis such as Ceuta. The Commission’s rapid-response plan, by contrast, retains the requirement that a Member State request assistance.
The Commission’s proposal for a revised Frontex mandate is expected by the end of October.
How successful is racial integration in Britain? The ultimate test, says James Hartwood, is living next door – which is when even small cultural differences are magnified to the max and tensions can boil over.
The post Integration and the Neighbours Who Integrated Perfectly Until You Had to Live Next Door appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
Faced with a fiscally incontinent state drowning in DEI and incapable of controlling its borders, it's easy for the Right to feel like its losing, says Dr Hugh Willbourn. But weirdly, so does the Left.
The post Everybody is Losing appeared first on The Daily Sceptic.
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