EU, ARABS TO END ILLEGAL MIGRATION AND TERROR
sharm el sheikh — Leaders from European Union and Arab League countries pledged on Sunday to boost cooperation in the fight against terrorism and to tackle unauthorised migration at a first-ever summit high in symbolism but likely to yield few concrete results.
The UAE was represented at the summit by His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Mohammed Al Sharqi, Member of the Supreme Council and Ruler of Fujairah.
Under tight security at the Red Sea resort city of Sharm El Sheikh, Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El Sisi opened two days of talks with a speech celebrating what he described as historic cooperation between the two organisations.
But despite the public display of unity, just drafting a summit statement has proved difficult. EU and Arab League foreign ministers failed to agree earlier this month on a text after Hungary objected to the section on migration, and work on the document is continuing.
In it, the leaders are likely to commit to addressing conflicts in Syria and Yemen or stalled Middle East peace efforts, yet paper over major differences about how to resolve them or who might be responsible. Some said that merely sitting down together at the same table for the first time is a result in itself.
“The meeting is the message,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker told reporters, summing up the
largely symbolic nature of the summit, while EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said “this summit is, in itself, a deliverable”.
Europe’s migration challenge is at the heart of the twoday meeting, being held under the slogan ‘Investing in Stability’. Desperate to bring migrant arrivals under control, the EU offered the summit last October as a symbolic sweetener to Sisi, much as they did with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2015.
The EU wants Sisi to order the Egyptian coast guard to pick up migrants leaving Libya and take them back to the African mainland, ensuring they do not become Europe’s responsibility. Sisi, in turn, would receive high-profile European recognition, promotion for Sharm El Sheikh and a muting of criticism of his government’s human rights record.
“We must work together — countries of origin, transit and destination — in order to break the business model of smugglers and traffickers who lure people into dangerous journeys and feed modern-day slavery,” said EU Council President Donald Tusk.
While the number of people crossing the central Mediterranean has now dropped to a seven-year low, Europe’s inability to agree on how to manage the arrivals has sparked a major political crisis, as nations bicker over who should take responsibility and whether other EU partners should help out.
Just days before the summit, the head of the EU’s border and coast guard agency praised the authorities in Cairo for preventing any migrant from setting out for Europe from the Egyptian coast since 2016.