President of the European Council

• Now it seems the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS) is on the way out of government.
• Although PiS came away with the highest percentage of votes (35.38%), a coalition of opposition parties looks more likely to end up in power.
• The Civic Coalition (KO), an alliance of centre-right parties led by former European Council president Donald Tusk, has secured 157 seats in parliament.

The return of Donald Tusk

• Tusk has vowed to turn back towards European Union partners and for Poland to keep pace with them on social issues, such as by introducing same-sex marriage.
• Women, who have seen their rights to abortion care ultimately vanish under PiS, can be hopeful of a shift back towards liberalisation under a Tusk administration.
• Tusk has said PiS has “dehumanised” too many people during its time in power.
• As Tusk himself put it: “It’s the end of the evil times”.

The demise of PiS

• The PiS years have been characterised by a gradual dismantling of Poland’s liberal democratic order.
• Donald Tusk and KO have won because Poles did not want to become an electoral autocracy, as forecast in the event of an unprecedented third term for PiS.
• PiS attempted to push immigration up the agenda during the campaign rather than tackling these issues head on.

Not quite a done deal…

• Andrzej Duda, president of the Polish Republic (and a PiS member), needs to decide who should form a government.
• Following established tradition, his first choice will be PiS because it was the most voted for party, even if it doesn’t have a majority.
• If Duda fails to find a government after three attempts, he will have to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections.

• For 40 years, western governments have entertained ideas of outsourcing asylum processing and refugee hosting to the global south.
• In line with these and other recent policy initiatives, prominent migration researcher Ruud Koopmans supported the idea of sending asylum seekers to Tunisia.
• But his endorsement was poorly timed, coming right after the African Union condemned Tunisia for systematic racist violence against sub-Saharan migrants.
• Based on this we explain the risks and frequent failures of outsourcing schemes, and offer more pragmatic alternatives for European asylum policies.

Why these policies fail

• First, since the 1980s, there has not been enough political support in Europe for these radical ideas.
• The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)implored the Danish government to abandon its externalisation ambitions.
• It said that developing countries already hosted 85% of the world’s refugees, and that such policies were xenophobic.
• A growing academic literature also argues that such externalisation policies actually represent a continuation of racialising colonial practices of transferring displaced people through imperial territories.

Niger and Rwanda

• Rwanda has also used Danish and British desires to silence criticism of its support for the M23 militia in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
• Niger got international praise for hosting refugees evacuated from Libyan prisons.
• The lack of economic opportunities in Niger weighed heavily on the refugees, as did the precarious security situation on the officials.
• According to local UNHCR staff in Niger, the government of Burkina Faso refused to host these refugees after hearing about Niger’s difficulties.

Political alternatives

• EU states could also make it possible to claim asylum at embassies or consulates.
• Similarly, humanitarian visas could be issued from embassies, as argued by European Parliament members in 2016.
• These would be real steps towards dismantling so-called smuggling economies, whose incentives have only increased with the one-sided EU focus on deterrence and border control.

• ESMA analyses preliminary effects of market correction mechanism on EU natural gas derivative market
  The European Securities and Markets Authority, the EU’s financial markets regulator and supervisor, has today published its preliminary data report following the introduction of the market correction mechanism (MCM) in the EU Regulation.
• The report describes the structure and main participants in the EU natural gas derivative market.
• It focuses on market indicators aimed at assessing the potential effects of the adoption of the MCM.
• Next steps
  Should stakeholders have any feedback on the preliminary data report, do not hesitate to reach out to ESMA.