From a UK perspective, the European Union’s approach to migration offers a clear lesson—one that Britain has learned the hard way and ultimately rejected. The EU’s fundamental mistake lies in a simple but decisive failure: it built a system of integration without ever deciding, in political and enforceable terms, who is allowed to stay.
This was not a technical oversight. It was a structural choice. European institutions replaced sovereignty with process, decision with management, and borders with administrative discretion. Integration became a goal in itself, while the core question of membership—who belongs to the political community and under what conditions—was systematically avoided.
The OECD International Migration Outlook 2025, widely relied upon by EU policymakers, reflects this mindset perfectly. Integration is framed as an economic strategy: filling labour shortages, sustaining welfare systems, mitigating demographic decline. Migrants are discussed in terms of employability and productivity. What is missing is not evidence, but authority.
In this framework, integration is never treated as a condition with consequences. There is no point at which failed integration leads to a clear outcome. Once an individual enters the integration pipeline, presence tends to become permanent by default. Integration is monitored, funded and expanded—but never enforced as a requirement for remaining.
This is precisely where the paradigm Integrazione o ReImmigrazione challenges the European model. Integration, in this paradigm, is not symbolic and not indefinite. It is a concrete obligation: language proficiency, respect for the law, economic self-reliance, and adherence to the norms of the host society. And crucially, it is paired with a real alternative. If integration fails, remaining cannot be justified.
The UK debate has long centred on accountability. A migration system that cannot enforce outcomes loses public trust. The OECD report, however, treats returns as a marginal, technical matter—limited to rejected asylum claims or formal irregularity. Returns are never framed as the natural consequence of unsuccessful integration. This separation allows institutions to avoid confronting failure, while continuously expanding integration programmes.
That separation is not neutral. It produces a system with no endpoint, no credible enforcement, and no clear signal to either migrants or citizens. Integration becomes a perpetual holding pattern. Responsibility dissolves into procedure.
From a British standpoint, this explains much of the EU’s paralysis. Borders without decisions create legal uncertainty. Integration without limits erodes confidence in the rule of law. A system that refuses to acknowledge that not everyone can or will integrate inevitably loses legitimacy.
The paradigm Integrazione o ReImmigrazione restores what the EU removed: decision. It does not reject integration—it gives it meaning. Integration becomes something that must be achieved, not merely attempted. ReImmigrazione is not a sanction, nor a moral judgement, but a structural component of a serious, rules-based migration system.
As long as the European Union continues to integrate without deciding who is allowed to stay, it will remain trapped in administrative complexity and political evasion. The OECD report does not solve this problem—but it exposes it clearly. Governance without decision is not governance at all.
Avv. Fabio Loscerbo
Lobbyist registered in the EU Transparency Register – ID 280782895721-36
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