EU meeting on migrants
BRUSSELS: European Union leaders are meeting in Brussels to agree on new measures to restrict arrivals across the Mediterranean as growing popular discontent over immigration puts pressure on governments from Germany to Italy.
With populist and rightwing parties on the rise across the EU, the bloc will move to tighten its external borders and assign more money for countries in regions such as Northern Africa to prevent people from getting into Europe, according to a draft statement of the twoday talks.
But EU leaders are deeply divided over what to do with legitimate asylum seekers who make it anyway, fleeing conflicts in the Middle East and Africa. The row has split them bitterly for three years and shows no signs of abating.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is under pressure from her coalition partners to stem migration to Germany, while Italy has long been overwhelmed with arrivals and the new Government there rejects any moves that would result in it handling more people.
At stake is EU members’ unity and trust in each other, as well as the bloc’s Schengen zone of controlfree travel. Unless a panEU solution is found, some countries are threatening to slap border checks to fish out migrants they do not want.
That would also hit business and travel across the bloc, threatening many jobs among the EU’s half a billion people.
Leaders are also set to clash over curbing socalled secondary movements of migrants, where people arriving in coastal states such as Italy make it to the wealthiest ones like Germany across the EU’s invisible borders.
If she cannot get an EUdeal on that, Merkel has said she would seek bilateral accords. The one she needs with Rome would be particularly difficult to pull off.
Differences between EU leaders have played out prominently in recent days, laying the ground for what is certain to be a fraught discussion behind closed doors.
Political pressure runs high, despite the fact that sea arrivals stand at 44,000 people so far this year, according to UN data, a far cry from the 2015 peak when more than a million refugees and migrants got in.
In public, the 28 EU leaders will attempt a show of unity to convince their voters back home they are in control and there will not be a repeat of 2015. Opinion polls show migration is a top concern for EU citizens.
One new idea they have is for ‘‘regional disembarkation platforms’’ around the Mediterranean, where the EU would hold people who try the dangerous crossing, assess their asylum requests and hold those who fail before they are sent back.
No quick decisions are expected on that, but the EU hopes the backing for such an idea would give Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and others enough ammunition to take back home and stave off the challenge from those advocating an even tougher course.
Summit chairman Donald Tusk said the stakes were high.
‘‘More and more people are starting to believe that only stronghanded authority, antiEuropean and antiliberal in spirit, with a tendency towards overt authoritarianism, is capable of stopping the wave of illegal migration,’’ he said.
‘‘If people believe them, that only they can offer an effective solution to the migration crisis, they will also believe anything else they say.’’