Fudged deal: EU agrees to disagree over migrant crisis
IT TOOK nearly nine hours of grinding negotiations, but as the dawn broke over Brussels yesterday morning the EU had once again papered over yawning differences on the bloc’s three-year-old migration crisis.
Europe’s bleary-eyed leaders emerged, each able to claim something they could call a “victory” out of the 12-paragraph communique that barely concealed the continent’s growing east-west divide.
Angela Merkel was frank. She said there was still “a lot of work to do to bridge the different views” but came away with a vital pledge to take “all necessary” measures to stop migrants registered in Italy and other EU front line countries from moving to Germany. The German chancellor returned to Berlin last night more able to face down the rebellion from her conservative Bavarian CSU coalition allies who had threatened to shut German borders if she did not confirm the right to send the migrants back.
Angelika Niebler, the CSU’S deputy leader, said that the summit had provided a “breakthrough”, hinting at a truce this weekend between Mrs Merkel and Horst Seehofer, her interior minister, who had threatened to bring her down.
While Mrs Merkel had apparently secured her political survival, at least for now, the rest of Europe was left to put the best possible construction on a series of political fudges that NGOS and other aid groups were already warning would never leave the drawing board.
Giuseppe Conte, the prime minister of Italy’s new populist government, set the combative tone by threatening to block the entire end-of-summit communique until Europe heeded his country’s call to share the burden of receiving 600,000 migrants in the past two years.
It was a move that angered fellow leaders – “the Italians are putting a knife to member states’ throats”, fumed one aide – but also forced them to take off their jackets and get down to business, working in shirtsleeves until 4.35am to draft a diplomatic deal.
Mr Conte was awarded a sentence which promised a “shared effort” and that would see migrants held in “controlled centres” in EU countries – but last night no member state, including Emmanuel Macron’s France, which helped broker the deal, was offering to host such a centre.
“Today Italy is no longer alone,” said Mr Conte, adding that he was “satisfied”, a verdict endorsed by Matteo Salvini, the hardline Italian interior minister who has catalysed Europe’s migrant debate by refusing NGO rescue ships permission to dock.
But in a sign of the limits of the deal, eastern EU states like Hungary and the Czech Republic, who have defied the West by refusing to take a single migrant, were handed an opt-out: the control centres were “voluntary”, as was the pledge to engage in “relocation and resettlement”.
Mr Macron hailed the agreement as an example of “European cooperation”, but as diplomats noted, it actually formalised the EU member states’ inability to cooperate when it came to accepting migrants.
There were moments of grim levity – as when Mr Conte warned his counterparts that he was a former lawyer and Boyko Borissov, the burly Bulgarian prime minister, chipped in that he “used to be a fireman” after Stefan Löfven, the Swedish prime minister, said he used to be a welder. The agreement did not hang together, Mr Löfven said.
For the hardliners, the prizes were more money, more guards for the EU’S Frontex border force and a promise to “swiftly explore” so-called Un-backed “disembarkation platforms” where migrants can be held in countries like Libya, Turkey or Egypt – none of which have agreed to the idea.
The conclusions noted that the platforms should be set up “without creating a pull factor” that would encourage more migrants to come – a key concession to Hungary and others who want the platforms to be used to turn away migrants, not attract them.
“Frankly none of it means much,” said an EU diplomat in a moment of exhausted candour. “No EU member has agreed to set up a centre, no African country has agreed to a hotspot, and nothing has really changed – except that Austria and the Visegrad states now have a written allowance not to take anybody.”
The UN’S migration and refugee agencies acknowledged the EU agreement, but cautioned that details – including the legal basis – and the agreement of the African Union needed to be secured.
The NGOS, blamed by hardline states for running a “taxi service” for Mediterranean migrants, reacted furiously.
Doctors without Borders (MSF) said that the EU needed to “come to their senses”, noting that 2,000 people had been returned to Libya last weekend “to be sent to arbitrary detention, with no due legal process”.
There were so many unanswered questions that even Donald Tusk, the European Council president, could only call it a “sort of ” political breakthrough, and admitted it was “too early” to call it a success.