In his book The politics of insecurity: fear, migration and asylum in the EU, Jef Huysmans states that, after World War II, security questions were framed within the Cold War concept of military aggression, defence and war.
This perception of security was, in reality, a political technique of framing policy questions in logics of survival, with the politics of fear and distrust thrown in as added ingredients.
These fears, by now well entrenched in the Western and European psyche, became even more intensified when the migration problem developed into fullblown crises with the EU becoming the main goal of the migration flow on its eastern and southern frontiers.
This brought about unparalleled political instability in the EU and the revitalisation of racist and far-right groups to the detriment of established moderate parties.
Europe, since World War II, has never been so unstable. Huysmans’s book was published in 2006. The recent upheavals in the Middle East and Africa (north and south) had yet to make themselves fully felt.
Many of these problems were home-grown but many others were made worse still by ill-conceived and ill-planned interventions of military coalitions from the West, led by the US under the auspices of Nato.
In time, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Palestine became main sources of the refugee flow into Europe. North Africa (especially Libya) became the other main goal for migrants from countries in the south of the continent to reach Europe. The largest countries of origin here were Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Central African Republic and Eritrea.
Over the last two years, irregular migration subsided to controllable levels. But this could be only a temporary mitigation
According to UNHCR statistics, the EU countries with the largest recognised numbers of refugees at the end of 2014 were France (252,264), Germany (216,793), Sweden (142,207), and the UK (117,161). With Chancellor Angela Merkel’s open-arms approach, Germany became the top recipient of asylum applications in the EU (20 per cent of them Syrian) by the end of 2015.
Germany’s policy is not altogether altruistic, since its economic expansion requires a continued human resources supply, which the country, with its sharply falling birth rate, cannot sustain indefinitely. However, presently, Merkel has few admirers in Europe (even in her own country), since her policy has seriously threatened the stability of neighbouring states in and out of the EU.
Many also blame the Schengen agreement and the Dublin regulations for Europe’s present migration plight. The Schengen area constitutes 22 of the 28 EU member states, plus four from the Free Trade Association states: a huge area where checks at the borders of member states have been abolished. The Dublin regulations, on the other hand, determine which member state is responsible for examining an asylum application. The intention here was to prevent asylum seekers from shopping around for their ideal host country.
This, unfortunately, resulted in a perverse situation where the first member state an asylum seeker sought to enter became responsible for the application. As a result, the worst affected countries in the EU of this system were those at its periphery (including, for some years, Malta). According to the UNHCR, by the end of 2015, the refugee problem had reached unprecedented proportions since World War II.
Syrian and Afghan refugees constituted the largest group. From North Africa, the flow of refugees in the direction of Europe had started gradually some 10 years ago and reached alarming levels as unscrupulous migrant smugglers, scenting huge profits at human expense, took over.
The situation peaked by the end of 2015, with many tragic outcomes in the Mediterranean Sea. The EU has never been divided as it is today for many reasons, the migration crisis contributing considerably to this unhappy state of affairs. According to Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, presently one of the most influential leaders in the EU, western Europe is ‘cracking up’ on account of the ongoing refugee crisis.
In contrast, he claims that Visegrad is now the “most stable region in terms of economy and politics”.
The Visegrad group is made up of Poland, Hungary, the Gzech Republic and Slovakia. These four states have taken a strong anti-immigrant stance. Hungary has especially defended itself by erecting a 500-kilometre razor ribbon fence to keep out refugees from its borders.
Austria is also building a similar fence on its borders with Slovenia and has closed the Brenner Pass, the main Alpine crossing into Austria from Italy. Malta has, over the last two years, breathed a sigh of relief as irregular migration subsided to controllable levels. But this could be only a temporary mitigation. According to France’s Defence Minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, there are 800,000 migrants in Libya waiting to cross the Mediterranean. This is probably a very modest estimate. We in Malta, should, therefore, be constantly vigilant.
Our stance so far in supporting solutions to the crisis that are based on humanitarian concepts should never be compromised, but we should also keep in mind our dire limitations in order not to be overwhelmed by a problem with which we evidently cannot cope alone.
Louis Cilia is a retired high-ranking civil servant