The last time I looked (Tuesday), the TVM website still carried an early follow-up report on Joseph Muscat’s speech at the UN General Assembly. His proposal for a global quota system for refugees – burden sharing by all the UN’s 193 members – was ‘gaining support among countries’. To be precise, three: Hungary (which actually had already proposed this within the EU), Slovenia and some place called Island (sic).
Since then, apparently, nothing. Well, not quite. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, praised the idea as highlighting ‘universal responsibility’ for people fleeing violence and persecution. Only he credited Hungary’s Viktor Orban with the proposal.
There’s a puzzle here. It’s understandable if the non-European world didn’t exactly fall over itself to embrace a proposal promising to add to their burdens. But shouldn’t we expect the entire EU membership to enthuse about one that promised to reduce theirs?
Yes, we should. Only there are a few snags with the proposal that make it both risky and difficult to implement.
One problem is self-inflicted. Muscat’s speech unnecessarily made it more difficult to build alliances with two groupings.
By echoing one of Orban’s proposals made at the EU summit on burden sharing, Muscat made it more difficult for other EU member states to accept it. Orban is almost universally detested within the EU and he returns the compliment by showing public contempt for some of the Union’s most cherished ideals.
In diplomacy, who you’re associated with matters as much as the substance of what you say. Sometimes, association even trumps substance. EU leaders will want to do nothing that encourages Orban; they want to keep him firmly in his place.
Muscat could have made the same proposal, with different emphasis and wording, while distancing himself from Orban. Instead, he ensured that the two were paired together in the news reports.
Then there was the gratuitous way in which Muscat spoke about non-EU countries. Only Europe, he said, was really doing something about refugees. It’s unclear what he meant. On other occasions, he’s publicly acknowledged the efforts of certain Middle Eastern and African countries.
If he meant that only Europe has a quota system – well, only the EU has a close-knit system of cooperation. The African Union and the League of Arab States are much looser organisations.
In any case, why use words that suggest that no other countries are pulling their weight? Turkey is hosting over one and a half million refugees. Various African countries between them (according to the UNHCR’s figures for 2014) host over a quarter of the world’s refugees.
Better advice and speech-writing would have made for a better overture. But they wouldn’t have removed the objective difficulties with each pillar of Muscat’s proposal
Better advice and speech-writing would have made for a better overture. But they wouldn’t have removed the objective difficulties with each pillar of Muscat’s proposal.
First, whether a global quota would reduce European burdens, not increase them, is something that needs careful thinking. The Syrian crisis is huge. Over half the country’s population is displaced; seven million internally. Four million have managed to break out. Only a small fraction have arrived in Europe, even though we think we’re experiencing a human tidal wave. But the Syrian crisis only accounts for a quarter of the world’s refugees.
Of course the UN Commissioner for Refugees will laud a proposal for global quotas. That’s because the UNHCR calculates there are just under 20 million refugees worldwide (five million of them Palestinians and of concern to another UN agency, UNWRA).
The trend is upward. The 2014 figures were up by some three per cent (three million people) over 2013. Every day, worldwide, around 42,500 people leave their homes and seek protection. Half are in Asia; 28 per cent in Africa. Developing countries (that is, not Europe) host some 86 per cent of the world’s refugees.
In other words, Europe is certainly not carrying the brunt of the burden. A new global quota system could well increase the number that Europe (and Malta) is expected to host.
A lot would depend on haggling over the formula. You can understand why the rest of Europe would be reluctant to back the proposal until more detail is forthcoming.
That’s the risky aspect. Then there are the difficulties with the carrot-and-stick approach proposed by Muscat.
He said if safe countries of origin do not cooperate (in taking back immigrants who do not qualify for asylum) then they should face sanctions. Countries that do cooperate would be rewarded with further aid and access to markets.
Safe countries? Getting international agreement on an official list of safe countries isn’t easy. It’s one thing for foreign ministries routinely to offer travel advice. It’s another to have an international official list of countries that are safe or unsafe.
On the one hand, naming and shaming would have considerable economic implications; it might even further destabilise a country. On the other, which UN agency will risk declaring a country ‘safe’ if it’s even approaching a grey area?
Suppose, however, a list of safe countries is drawn up. Trade sanctions and preferential access to markets are difficult to implement. The World Trade Organisation’s rules (to which Malta and the rest of the EU are signatories) get in the way.
The WTO rules say you can’t discriminate against any particular country. Discriminating in favour can only be done under very special conditions.
The bottom-line is that it’s virtually impossible to draw up a list of objective economic criteria (required by the rules) that include only cooperative countries and exclude the uncooperative ones. The uncooperative countries will almost certainly fall into the same economic category as the ones being rewarded. Waivers from the principle of non-discrimination can be sought but EU experience shows it’s time-consuming and there are no guarantees you’ll get one.
Not all carrots and sticks are entangled in WTO rules. Development aid (mentioned by Muscat) isn’t; but such aid hasn’t been very effective in dealing with corrupt, destabilising governments. We’d need to know what the other sanctions and incentives are before we can judge if they can be effective.
I reckon it’s these considerations that explain why the EU hasn’t embraced the idea of a global quota. By the end of this year, with the migration summit and CHOGM, we should know something of what key African partners make of it.