Paul Taylor POLITICO is a contributing editor.
PARIS – Migration is back on the European Union’s agenda, but disappointingly little has changed since last time member states locked horns on an issue that has thwarted any and all efforts to shape a common policy. was rejected.
EU politicians are still more inclined to posture and score points against each other for domestic gain than to seek practical compromises that could help forge a united approach. And although attitudes and hearts have hardened in most European countries, calling only for a more impregnable “Fortress Europe” is not consistent policy.
At a summit this Thursday and Friday, EU leaders are now set to once again debate the issue, but the predictable north-south and east-west divides are already showing.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, fearing defeat in provincial elections due in mid-March, is under increasing pressure to keep migrants locked down in southern Europe. He wants the European Commission to oversee enforcement of the long-standing Dublin Regulation, which requires countries where migrants first enter the EU to register them and process their asylum claims .
This won’t wash with Greece and Italy, of course, as they bear the brunt of people fleeing war, hunger and poverty in the Middle East and sub-Saharan Africa. Rome and Athens have long called for greater EU cohesion and burden-sharing.
According to a draft communique seen by my POLITICO colleagues, at the summit, EU leaders will say that Europe will “leverage all relevant EU policies, instruments and tools, including growth, trade and visas, as well as legal migration”. opportunities”. To take back rejected migrants to the countries of origin and transit.
Efforts to arm such weapons have so far produced little result, and they threaten to damage the EU’s reputation in Africa. The commission is proposing ways to send more rejected asylum seekers home, but the figures are discouraging. fewer one out of four Was fired last year.
Italy’s new prime minister, populist Georgia Meloni, had already sparked a crisis with France during her first weeks in office by closing Italian ports to an NGO boat that rescues Mediterranean migrants, demanding that that Paris would take them. The French government reluctantly filled a boat as a humanitarian gesture.
Despite this, Italian figures show that arrivals by sea have continued to rise in the three months since Meloni took office, showing how long-term migrant trends – climate change, conflict, famine and economic hardship – are changing. Are inspired by—not amenable to—the title—quick fixes or grabby political rhetoric.
In other “Fortress Europe” news, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehmer wants the European Union to finance fencing on Bulgaria’s border with Turkey. However, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen – who is from the same centre-right European People’s Party (EPP) as Nehmer – has refused to allow EU money to be spent on walls and fences, arguing that They are contrary to European values.
Migrants waiting to disembark in Toulon after being rescued at sea | Vincenzo Circosta/AFP via Getty Images
Manfred Weber, leader of the EPP in the European Parliament, has also urged Germany and France, which financially support humanitarian rescue efforts, to take more responsibility for rescued migrants as well as a code of conduct for NGOs. Let’s invoke Ships – could that be code for “let them sink”?
“We are sleeping in a new migration crisis. The reception capacity for migrants through the Balkan and Mediterranean routes has been exhausted,” Weber told Politico’s Brussels Playbook. “Since the EU failed to adopt a comprehensive policy following the last migration crisis in 2015, this issue has become taboo. It is now coming back with a vengeance.
However, at this point, let’s remember that Europe is selective about which types of migration it regards as a crisis, and which it welcomes with open arms.
Nearly 13 million Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion will enter the EU during 2022, and they have been rightly embraced with rapidly expanding reception capacity and extraordinary flexibility, including the right to work. Many have returned home, but around 5 million have registered for temporary protection in the bloc – including 1.5 million in Poland and more than a million in Germany.
According to the EU border agency Frontex, 330,000 “irregular arrivals” were recorded from the Mediterranean region and the western Balkans during the same period – a 64 percent increase from 2021, when the COVID-19 pandemic kept numbers down. It was the largest number since the 2015 migration wave, when more than a million refugees and migrants, mostly from Syria, flowed into the EU.
The biggest growth last year was seen on the overland Western Balkans route, at least partly because countries such as Serbia and Bosnia offer visa-free entry to citizens of African and Asian countries. Many of these migrants were smuggled across borders into the European Union.
However, the Central European countries that have been most generous in accommodating Ukrainians are those that refused to accept Syrian or Afghan refugees in 2015–2016 – despite Europe’s efforts to shelter refugees from war and persecution Legal and moral obligations color- and religion-blind.
This is not just a moral issue, it is also a matter of economic and demographic understanding. Many EU countries are facing growing labor shortages, hindering economic recovery from the COVID-19 recession and threatening to constrain potential growth in the longer term.
With its falling birth rate and aging population, Germany needs an additional 400,000 workers a year – many of them in unskilled or semi-skilled work. There are thousands of vacant positions in France, with cafes, bars and restaurants closing due to staff shortages or limiting opening hours. Most European countries also need more care workers to keep their health services running and to care for the growing number of older people.
This is not to say that the EU should give up trying to control migration. The political damage and decline in public confidence caused by the perceived loss of control of Europe’s borders in 2015 cannot be disputed.
Suffice it to say that we must seek practical, humane ways to channel the inevitable migration flow – not play beggar-thy-neighbor politics or try to build a makeshift fort.