EU, Africa agree migration plan
Sweden reinstates border checks
VALLETTA, Nov 12, (Agencies): European Union and African leaders on Thursday ended an acrimonious summit by approving a 1.8-billion-euro plan to stem an unprecedented and politically explosive flow of migrants across the Mediterranean.
Two days of often sharp exchanges in Malta concluded with the adoption of a controversial scheme to accelerate the repatriation of failed asylum-seekers, despite openly-expressed misgivings on the African side.
In a reflection of the mood, Senegal President Macky Sall used the closing press conference to take a swipe at Western neo-colonialism, claiming African governments would have no need of aid if they could collect 60 billion euros lost through multinational tax avoidance and other “fraudulent” outflows.
In a nod to African fears of a “fortress Europe” drawing up the drawbridge, Thursday’s deal calls for more opportunities for legal migration. But the only concrete step agreed was a scheme to expand scholarships for students and academics to come to Europe.
The action plan is to be underpinned by 1.8 billion euros ($1.9 billion) of initial EU funding for an ‘Emergency Trust Fund’ which will provide finance for development projects designed to address the root causes of migratory pressures including poverty, conflict, repressive governance and the unsafe conditions endured by the millions of people displaced across Africa.
Budget
The money is coming from the EU’s collective budget and the bloc’s 28 member states have been asked to match it with contributions of their own.
The national pledges to date however have totalled just 78.2 million euros, in an underwhelming response that officials in Brussels partly blame on populist pressure on governments to be seen taking a tough line on the migrant issue.
EU Council President Donald Tusk said the pressures on governments had left the bloc’s border-free Schengen accords on the brink of collapse. “Saving Schengen is a race against time and we are determined to win that race,” Tusk said.
Africans have accounted for some 140,000 of the roughly 800,000 migrants who have arrived in the EU by sea so far this year with far larger numbers now coming from Syria and other parts of the Middle East via Turkey and Greece.
Efforts to slow the rate of arrivals on that front will dominate a separate meeting of EU leaders in Valletta on Thursday afternoon, at which steps to improve cooperation with Turkey over the migrant issue will be reviewed.
Sall said the deal with the EU did not offer anything like the money needed to address Africa’s problems and accused
the Europeans of exaggerating the scale of African migration to Europe and “putting too much emphasis on readmission (of illegal immigrants), perhaps because of public opinion.”
“And I think there is also a fundamental, philosophical question: you cannot insist on Africans being readmitted to their countries of origin when you are welcoming Syrians and others,” the Senegalese leader added. “The numbers of Africans migrating towards Europe are not as great as people say.”
There was also grumbling about the outcome of the discussions from the EU’s leading anti-migrant hawk, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
“It’s painful to admit but a few Greek ferryboat captains have been more effective in the struggle against migration than several rounds of meetings of 28 prime ministers,” Orban said in a reference to recent moves by ferry skippers to stop transporting migrants from islands near Turkey to the Greek mainland.
Meanwhile, European leaders scrambled Thursday to keep their passport-free travel zone from collapsing, after Germany, Sweden and Slovenia acted on their own to tighten borders or erect fences to slow the relentless influx of people marching into Europe.
A two-day summit held on the
Mediterranean island of Malta was meant to focus on how to send back to Africa those who don’t qualify for asylum and discourage others from attempting the risky journey across the seas in search of a better life.
He cited individual moves by Germany, Sweden, Slovenia and other EU nations in response to what they see as threats to their border security from the tens of thousands of asylum-seekers who have been streaming in from Africa, the Middle East and Asia.
“Without effective control of our external borders, Schengen will not survive,” Tusk said. “We must hurry, but without panic.”
The Schengen travel zone involves 30 nations, including some not in the European Union.
Tusk’s remarks came at the end of a migration summit between EU and African leaders, where they signed up to an action plan of short and longer term measures to halt the flow of Africans coming to Europe and steps to send back those who don’t qualify for asylum.
Sweden reinstated border controls on Thursday in a bid to gain control over the massive influx of migrants arriving in the country, without blocking the steady flow of asylum seekers.
On Thursday at 12:00 pm (1100 GMT), police began carrying out identification
checks on passengers travelling on trains crossing the bridge over the Oresund strait from Denmark, an AFP correspondent reported.
Police were also checking papers at at terminals for ferries arriving in southern Sweden from Denmark and Germany.
Those are the routes most used by migrants.
“This is not a fence. We need to make sure that we have control ... We have to make sure we know who is coming to Sweden,” Prime Minister Stefan Lofven insisted.
“Introducing border controls is not to prevent people from coming to Sweden to seek asylum,” the head of the Swedish Migration Agency Anders Danielsson meanwhile told Swedish news agency TT.
“On the contrary. They will have their case heard, but we need to (regain) control,” he added.
Sweden, a country of 9.8 million people, has taken more refugees as a proportion of its population than any other country in Europe as the continent struggles with its worst migration crisis since World War II.
The Scandinavian country expects to receive up to 190,000 asylum seekers this year — the equivalent of 1.5 million people arriving in a country the size of Germany.