Political courage is needed if the flow of migrants is to be managed across Europe
AS 2017 draws to a close, Europe’s divisions regarding migration have burst into the open again in a Brussels that has been publicly more preoccupied with Brexit over the past year.
While human rights organisations – including Amnesty International in a hard-hitting report this week – have accused the EU of being complicit, through its policy of interception at sea and “return”, in the abuse of migrants using Libya as a transit point, in Brussels the conversation tends to revolve more around the rancorous debate over mandatory settlement quotas for member states.
That debate has not progressed much in the past two years since European leaders scrambled to deal with unprecedented refugee streams due to a grinding war in Syria and instability in the wider region. The flow that characterised 2015 and 2016 has slowed – in Germany applications for refugee status have dropped to levels not recorded since 2014 – partly due to the twists and turns of the Syrian conflict and partly due to efforts to cut off routes that most migrants took during that period. Controversial moves, including the EU-Turkey deal under which undocumented migrants were sent back, and the interception and return policy aimed at stopping the flow across the Mediterranean from Libya, have brought numbers down but – as human rights organisations ask – at what price?
The EU’s border agency, Frontex, released figures this week showing that the number of migrants reaching Europe through the central Mediterranean route from Libya to Italy dropped by one-third during the first 11 months of this year, to around 116,400, compared to the same period in 2016.
Most of those making the journey were Nigerians, according to Frontex.
The question of how much EU member states should share the burden in the form of mandatory quotas for the allocation of refugees between member states exposed divisions yet again at an EU summit in Brussels this week.
In a memo sent to national leaders ahead of the meeting, European Council President Donald Tusk called the quotas “ineffective” and “divisive”, and instead focused on efforts to staunch migration flows outside the EU’s borders. Mr Tusk’s approach drew the ire of the EU’s commissioner for migration Dimitris Avramopoulos, who described the memo as “anti-European”. Mr Tusk was also criticised for his framing of the debate at the opening of the summit. He spoke of an “East-West” divide in Europe on the migration issue, arguing that “these divisions are complicated by emotions which make it hard to find even common ground and rational argument for this debate”.
Mr Tusk’s stance – while criticised by Germany and Greece, the latter, like Italy, at the frontline of Europe’s migration challenge – was backed by countries including his native Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic. These so-called Visegrad Four countries – all of which
have witnessed the rise of far-right populism sentiment at home – have made clear that their solidarity with other EU member states on the migration challenge extends little beyond helping finance efforts to prevent migrants coming to Europe.
The European Commission recently referred the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary to the EU Court of Justice over their failure to comply with the EU relocation programme for refugees adopted in 2015.
This week the Visegrad Four issued a statement saying that the “migratory pressure on Europe can only be efficiently tackled by ensuring the protection of external borders, while addressing the root causes”, and pledged funding for a project aimed at “protecting the EU’s borders” in Libya.
NOT good enough, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has sought over the past two years to persuade other EU countries to share the burden member states like Germany have largely shouldered until now.
“We not only need solidarity in terms of regulating and controlling migration at the exterior borders – that is good, that is important – but we also need solidarity in terms of interior issues,” she said. “Selective solidarity, in my opinion, cannot exist among EU member states.”
Set against the hum of indignation over relocation schemes and burdensharing are those voices which have been repeatedly arguing for several years now that key to any sensible European policy on managing migration is creating legal channels for regular migration.
While this would not spell the end of irregular migration – Libya’s political and security vacuum means it will be a hub for people-smugglers for some time yet – it would at least help manage the flows.
But putting such a system in place and selling it to European publics at a time when the far-right is fanning antiimmigration sentiment across the continent requires a level of political courage that is in short supply at present.