Europe is losing its own people.
Every year, thousands of Europe’s brightest researchers, entrepreneurs, innovators and highly skilled young professionals leave their regions or leave Europe altogether in search of better opportunities. From Southern and Eastern Europe to North America and Asia, the brain drain continues to weaken our economies, deepen territorial inequalities and undermine our long-term competitiveness.
At the same time, Europe is falling behind in the global race for talent. While countries such as the United States, Canada and Australia actively compete for the world’s best minds, the European Union still struggles to attract and retain highly skilled workers and international graduates.
This is one of Europe’s greatest strategic vulnerabilities.
If we are serious about Europe’s future, our priority should be to keep talent in Europe and attract new talent from around the world.
Instead of spending political capital and taxpayers’ money on legally uncertain and operationally questionable offshore detention schemes, the European Union should strengthen initiatives such as Choose Europe, invest massively in quality jobs, affordable housing, education, research and innovation, and build a genuine strategy to attract talents from the United States, South Korea, Japan and other partner countries.
Europe needs an effective, orderly and credible migration policy. It needs efficient return procedures and a functioning asylum system. But Young Democrats for Europe firmly opposes the creation of so-called “return hubs” outside the European Union.
These centres risk creating legal loopholes and accountability gaps, raise serious concerns regarding the protection of fundamental rights and are particularly unsafe for vulnerable groups, including unaccompanied minors.
Moreover, there is little evidence that such schemes actually work.
The Italian facilities in Albania have already shown the limits of this approach: legal challenges, operational difficulties, very limited results and enormous costs for taxpayers. Europe deserves policies that are effective and evidence-based, not expensive political theatre designed to produce headlines.
Security and humanity are not contradictory.
Europe can protect its borders while upholding human dignity, the rule of law and its international obligations. The answer to citizens’ legitimate concerns about migration cannot be the normalisation of legal grey zones or the outsourcing of responsibilities to third countries.
We are proud of the Members of the European Parliament from the European Democratic Party (EDP) and Renew Europe, including our Secretary General Sandro Gozi, who voted against these provisions and defended a Europe that remains both secure and faithful to its values.
Yesterday, some celebrated this vote by chanting:
“Send them back.”
Our answer is different.
Send back the politics of fear. Send back the illusion that Europe can outsource its responsibilities. Send back the idea that our values are a weakness rather than our greatest strength.
And above all, let us stop sending our own talents away.
The Europe we believe in does not deport its problems abroad while exporting its brightest minds. It invests in people, creates opportunities, attracts talent and protects fundamental rights.
This is the Europe that Young Democrats for Europe will continue to fight for in every country, every election and every institution.
And if something must be sent back, it should be the far-right ideas that seek to divide our societies and diminish our Union. We will work, with pro-European, humanistic and pragmatic policies, to send them back where they belong: back in the polls and out of the centre of European decision-making.
*Because Europe’s future will not be built on fear.
It will be built on talent, dignity and hope.*