Compared with what is happening in Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia, the plan announced recently by the European Union in the wake of the EU leaders’ emergency summit convened a fortnight earlier is a model of compassion. Contrast what is happening in the Bay of Bengal with the Mediterranean Sea. It is the difference between saving lives and perpetuating the tide of human misery of desperate people escaping persecution, abject poverty or broken states.
As Europe’s near neighbours, Libya and Syria are our major problems. After four years of civil war in Syria, there are four million refugees. Tens of thousands have headed to North Africa seeking passage to Europe, joining migrants from Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Nigeria, Niger, the Ivory Coast, Senegal and Mali in a desperate scramble from Africa and the Middle East.
The EU plan launched on May 13 – the ‘Agenda on Migration’ - is a mixture of the old and the new. Some of the recommendations were expected. The budget for maritime patrols will treble. The EU’s macho proposals to confront people-traffickers by force. The need for EU countries to speed up the process of separating refugees from economic migrants.
Specialised technical teams from the EU agencies will support front line member states that face sudden influxes, the intention being to select the economic migrants that countries deem they need and deport those they do not want. Experience in Malta shows this is easier said than done. Indeed, throughout the EU the return rate of failed asylum seekers has been a dismal 40 per cent.
Over the long term, the plan makes provisions for financial assistance to countries of origin, including overdue changes to trade policies which stifle growth in developing countries. The problem with this is that – vitally helpful for economic growth though it will be – overseas aid will take time to bear fruit. Development assistance of a few hundred million euros will not prevent economic migrants setting out on their perilous journeys for richer rewards in Europe.
Moreover, too little aid is going to the countries – Lebanon, Turkey, Palestine and Jordan – that host the vast majority of Syria’s refugees. The plan recommends the EU takes a total of 20,000 refugees who are still in these countries when it is estimated that there are millions of Syrian refugees languishing in camps. The United Nations Refugees Commissioner says the EU should take in 20,000 each year, a considerable increase on what the EU is offering. The scale of the EU effort is clearly unequal to the task.
The more controversial element of the plan concerns the call for mandatory relocation of most asylum-seekers who reach the EU based on a quota mechanism so that the burden of processing them may be more equally shared instead of, as now, falling mainly on front line states like Malta and Italy. A legislative proposal for the introduction of a permanent system of ‘responsibility-sharing’ among member states will be tabled by the end of the year.
It will be a mark of strength if the EU were able to share responsibility and act equitably and decisively in a common cause
The country quotas – based on a distribution key formula made up of population size, economic strength, unemployment and refugees already present – are linked to a proposal for the resettlement within the EU of 20,000 asylum-seekers over a period of two years. However, the total of 20,000 to be resettled in this way is a drop in the ocean compared to the 170,000 who attempted the Mediterranean crossinglast year.
Eastern Europeans countries with no experience of housing and integrating refugees may well object to the small sums of money on offer to help introduce the quota scheme. Hungary’s right-winggovernment has already complained. Only four countries – France, Germany, Italy and Spain – have been asked to take more than 1,000 refugees while the UK, Ireland and Denmark will not form part of these measures due to earlier opt-outs from the relevant EU treaty.
It is an achievement that big countries like France, Germany and Italy support the plan but the bar may well be lowered when EU leaders meet again in June to debate the proposals. Frans Timmerman, the powerful Dutch vice president of the European Commission – one of the very few commissioners worth his political salt – has overseen much of this work. He hopes the idea will restore public trust in a broken and inequitable system. It might even open the way to more ambitious plans in the future.
In parallel, the migration plan envisages the deployment of warships off the coast of Libya to target people-smugglers and to “disrupt their business model”.
The UK and France will be seeking a UN mandate from the Security Council on behalf of the EU for a naval operation inside Libyan waters.
Libyan cooperation to dismantle the criminal networks will be vital. I doubt both the military practicability of this proposal and its political feasibility. A Russian veto is highly likely.
The only practical way to keep migrants out of the Mediterranean Sea is to set up transit camps in North African countries for those intercepted on their way to Europe. These can be designed to takepeople rescued at sea or as arrival points for those carrying out the long trek across Africa to reach the North African coast.
Their asylum applications can then be considered in the transit camps, thus enabling the EU to exercise some control over the whole process without exposing the migrants to the hazardous sea journey or imposing on front line countries the administrative, financial and social burdens of handling the applications of thousands rescued at sea. Talks between the EU and Tunisia are already under way and it is thought Morocco, Niger and Nigeria may also take part in the scheme.
Getting the scheme right will be hard and may take time. Clear incentives in the form of generous financial aid to the host countries and human expertise to process asylum applications in conjunction with the UNHCR will be crucial. Assessing eligibility for asylum in Africa, rather than Europe, will make it easier to control migrants’ movements and attack at source the notorious human-trafficking market.
The European Commission, which has ducked and weaved around the problems of immigration for at least the last 10 years, is to be commended for finally making a manful attempt at designing a comprehensive plan of action. It is still riddled with gaps and weaknesses. Some of the proposals – such as the imaginative plan to set up transit camps in Africa – will take time to implement. Others – such as the military action to disrupt the people-traffickers in Libya – may fall foul of UN diplomatic infighting and prove wholly impracticable in any case.
But, at least, the Commission has faced up to the scale of the problem and put forward an agenda to tackle it collectively.
The proposals must be approved by EU leaders in June. They will bring to the table the usual squabbles. Countries will seek to wriggle out of their responsibilities. But the auguries for a constructive agenda for EU migration seem more hopeful than they have been for more than a decade.
In such a crisis, it will be a mark of strength if the EU were able to share responsibility and act equitably and decisively in a common cause.