The tragic sight a year ago of scores of bodies of immigrants laid out on the beaches of Lampedusa and Sicily drove home the horror and nature of global migration. It led to Italy, in a fit of humanitarian generosity not seen in Europe before, setting up an operation called Mare Nostrum.
It is estimated that this year over 100,000 irregular migrants have been rescued, arriving in Italy, some in boats from as far as Syria. Italy has done this at great financial and humanitarian cost to itself. Malta has indirectly benefitted from Italy’s gesture as numbers arriving here have plummeted.
But Italy, in economic difficulties and under pressure from its own people, who are understandably not persuaded that their country should become Europe’s sole bearer of the immigration burden, has rightly put its foot down. It has demanded that the EU’s so-called border agency, Frontex, should take over the task of running Mare Nostrum.
The problem is that Frontex is in reality a paper tiger. The European Commissioner responsible for immigration, Cecilia Malmström, may argue that the EU’s “border management policy” is based on operational and financial solidarity. But the reality in the air and on the seas is a far cry from “the deployment of border guards… in managing EU borders,” as it claims.
Worse, the Frontex executive director has admitted that according to intelligence sources, criminal gangs “are abusing Mare Nostrum”. It seems making sea crossings safer has simply served to attract more people to chance their lives to get into Europe.
Although the director praised the Italian operation, in a blinding glimpse of the obvious he said: “Criminals know about Mare Nostrum and so they are sending more people on less seaworthy vessels, supplying them with less fuel and food. Their operation has become cheaper”. As we saw yesterday, the consequences can be tragic.
As if feeling that Frontex should be offering solutions, not simply a grim picture of the severe limitations of Mare Nostrum, the Frontex director went on to say that their future plans included trying to organise a new mission, to be called Triton, that would be located closer to EU shores, not in the same area covered by Mare Nostrum.
The EU, through Frontex, seems determined to reinforce failure, rather than to implement the radical solutions needed to reduce immigration into Europe. As the European Parliamentary elections demonstrated, the people of Europe are seeking tough border controls. While humanitarian rescues are important, they cannot be the sole answer to the problem.
The crux of the issue is that there should be a change to the EU’s laws on asylum and its policies on immigration. The possibility of the EU establishing a system of processing applications for migration to Europe closer to migrants’ countries of origin, or in a safe transit country like Tunisia, thus keeping them out of the hands of people-smugglers, should be followed up.
The EU is better placed than individual member states to try to manage such a system. This would be an obvious way of bringing some order to the chaotic conditions that exist at present and might reduce illegal immigration.
Europe faces an extremely complex humanitarian and political challenge. The debate about it is characterised by very strongly held political positions. The fact that Europe is itself facing threats in the Ukraine and the Middle East has forced immigration onto the back-burner. But the issue is too important to be allowed to fester there.