Europe’s ‘fortress’ on shaky foundations

Compared with the most recent years, the European Union does not currently face a large external migration problem. What it undoubtedly faces, however, is a large internal political problem about such migration. Monthly “irregular arrivals” into the EU from the Middle East and Africa have actually fallen like a stone since 2015. In May this year they were down 96 per cent from their October 2015 peak.

The politics of migration are an entirely different matter. They follow a separate path. Austria and Italy have both elected hardline governments in recent months to join the eastern bloc of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in resisting refugees and opposing any EU quota system. Germany’s coalition government is also under huge internal pressure to take a much tougher approach than in the past.

It was very important that the EU struck its deal last week. Failure to do so would have signalled the union’s impotence in the face of external migration and of the politics that this migration has thrown up. The leaders backed plans to put more money and resources into external border controls and to create “processing centres” outside Europe. Italy’s attempt to block every single summit conclusion unless its migration control demands were satisfied may have gone down well among voters back home. But it signalled that, if this is a “fortress Europe”, it is a fortress full of faultlines.