UK funding France detention site is 'wrong way to go': EU Commission VP Schinas

'"The EU has not produced a cohesive asylum and migration policy, and this is one of the historic failures of the EU," Schinas tells Armen Georgian. "We've had to work as firefighters, running from one crisis to another. Now the time has come to produce this big agreement. We need to build a house with three floors. The first is relations with countries of origin and transit countries. We'll never be able to manage internally unless we manage externally. The second floor is border management. That means a more collective system for protecting our external border, and uniform border procedures for all member states. And the third floor is the solidarity floor; burden-sharing, across all 27 member states."

Schinas admits that EU members don’t see eye-to-eye, though. "The real problem is that member states at the moment want to go straight to the floor that interests them," he says. "So, solidarity-givers mainly want to stay on the first and second floors. And solidarity-takers believe we can have the third floor without the other two. I'm very clear that the three floors have to be constructed at the same time."

As for improving ties with countries of origin and transit countries, Schinas says: "We need to build win-win partnerships. We have to help them to create the conditions for better lives for their people, so that they can stay there, instead of those lives being put in the hands of the smugglers. And this is not only linked to money and investment. This can also be Erasmus scholarships. It could be visas. It could be trade preferences. We need to mobilise everything we have to make that win-win partnership."

On the UK-France migrant deal that will see the UK fund a detention centre in France, Schinas states: "This