EU rebuked for 36bn euro refugee pushback gambit
ITALY - The European Union is to increase its spending in Africa by more than 20% over the next seven years to a minimum of 36bn euro in an attempt to reduce the number of migrants and refugees crossing the Mediterranean. But a succession of reports funded by the EU or written by leading MEPs say European efforts to stem the flow is characterized by misdirected finances, lack of accountability and repeated breaches of basic human rights, including an inability to undermine the business model of human trafficking, an industry worth as much as 35bn pounds a year. Special concern has been expressed that EU funds are being used to give bonuses to the Italiantrained Libyan coastguard to force boats back to Africa. The arrival of millions of refugees in Europe and the deaths of thousands more attempting the crossing has become the continent’s biggest policy headache, now threatening the stability of the German government and the cohesion of the EU. The biggest challenge is Libya, where deepening political chaos has led to more than 500,000 people crossing into Italy in recent years, hastening the election of a populist government in Rome that is now threatening to form an anti-migrant “axis of the willing” with likeminded central and eastern European countries. Politicians are scrambling for a new formula not just to distribute the people who have reached Europe but also to return those whose asylum claims are refused. The EU is also searching for a credible means to reduce the incentive for people to come to Europe. The fate of mainstream social democratic and centrist parties in next spring’s European elections may rest on the outcome. A detailed examination of EU efforts to tackle the issue finds a “mismatch between the grandiloquent declarations and the action actually implemented on the ground”. The study by the watchdog Eunpack, based on local interviews, reports a “troubling lack of monitoring and impact evaluation schemes across most of the EU crisis response initiatives in Libya”. It concludes: “The outsourcing of migration management to Libyan authorities and the dramatic increase in the number of people in custody in Libyan detention centres is fuelling a criminal economy of exploitation and traffic.” (The Guardian)