After the unceasing efforts to save the euro from collapse, immigration is the next major political challenge facing Europe. Yet, attempts to find a solution have repeatedly been thwarted by the inability of member states to find common cause or a common strategy. Until the European Union’s leaders stop simply protecting their own narrow national self-interests, the lack of a coherent immigration policy will continue to haunt the continent.
The problem lies in the impact of immigration on different countries, as well as their perception of it. In the decade from 2003 to 2012, net migration (that is, immigration minus emigration) to the major countries of Europe was as follows: to the United Kingdom 1.86 million; to Spain 3.9 million; to Italy, 3.5 million; to Germany 1.11 million; to France 391,000. Poland bucked the trend; it showed a loss through emigration of 389,000. In the smaller countries, net inward migration was 497,000 to Belgium; 451,000 to Sweden and 253,000 to The Netherlands.
Malta’s net migration has also increased. But our concern is focused on African migrants, with many East European migrants apparently welcome.
The political and economic impact on each EU country of this mass movement of people across continents (mainly from Africa and the Middle East) and between countries of Europe has varied enormously. It accounts largely for the lack of a common European plan of what should be done to curb, control or manage immigration.
In the UK, under pressure from the insurgent UKIP party, Prime Minister David Cameron has made curbing immigration the centrepiece of his renegotiation of Britain’s relations with the EU. Immigration – which includes a wish to reduce immigration from newly-acceding EU countries – could prove the catalyst for Britain’s exit from the EU in three years’ time.
Spain, on the other hand, is unusually relaxed about immigration, despite its high unemployment rate. Instead of debating curbs on free movement or migrant quotas, Italy has focused on saving lives at sea and letting migrants leave the country to head north to Germany, the UK and Sweden, where job prospects are healthier.
Germany holds the principle of EU freedom of movement to be sacrosanct but domestic concerns have been growing about the rising number of migrants, both from Eastern Europe and elsewhere, putting pressure on local benefits and services. Sweden’s days as the most liberal country in the EU on immigration are numbered. The hard-right, anti-immigrant party, Sweden Democrats, has seen to that. Resentment against immigration in The Netherlands, from outside and inside the EU, has driven voters to protest parties.
The fractured political landscape of Europe’s bigger countries tells a similar story. In France, Britain and Germany, right-wing insurgent parties are claiming a unique ability to speak the unvarnished and uncomfortable truth. In France, Marine le Pen, leader of the anti-immigrant (and anti-EU) National Front, is snapping at the heels of an unpopular President François Hollande. In Germany, the rise of the anti-euro Alternative for Germany (AfD) is inhibiting Angela Merkel’s room for manoeuvre on the eurozone as well as applying pressure to adopt quotas on EU migrants.
Governments in several other countries face similar challenges from populists. For example, the Five Star Movement and Lega Nord in Italy, or Golden Dawn in Greece. In various guises, they play on deeper fears, of which the disruptions caused by immigration, social change and economic uncertainty play a large part.
Throughout the EU, politicians and bureaucrats in Brussels appear out of touch with voters’ deep-seated feelings about immigration. Europe is experiencing the most uncertain, confused and chaotic immigration environment for many years.
Voters in virtually every EU country resent the presence of migrants both black and white
Dissatisfaction and policy drift are further complicated by a stark European North-South divide. Front line states in southern Europe continue to struggle against the growing tide of asylum seekers from Africa and the Middle East.
The Commission’s response to Italy’s cessation of operation Mare Nostrum is, predictably, inadequate.
Frontex – the EU’s ‘border agency’ – with a budget one third of Italy’s has been tasked with mounting a much-diminished Mare Nostrum, to be known as operation Triton. Since Frontex’s limited resources will only be deployed in a small area some 30 kilometres south of Sicily, this will leave search and rescue operations woefully stretched and also expose Malta and Lampedusa to huge influxes of irregular immigrants from the Eastern and Central Mediterranean. This is unlikely to augur well for Malta. Nor is it good for Europe.
The crux of the issue is that there should be a radical change to the EU’s policy on both internal (intra-country) and external immigration and its laws on asylum. The problems facing Europe on immigration appear insoluble in the short and medium term but could be manageable in the longer term, provided steps are taken now to adopt a common strategy.
The EU must find practical, humane and properly-managed solutions to the sources of migration from Africa as well as the unpopular effects of intra-EU national migration flows from poorer to richer countries of Europe. The introduction of quotas and controls over migrants’ access to and eligibility for welfare benefits (the ECJ has just ruled on this) would help.
As to external migration flows to Europe – Malta’s major concern – the EU should establish with the international refugee agencies a system of processing applications for migration to Europe closer to migrants’ countries of origin or in transit countries like Syria, Libya or Tunisia, thus discouraging them from taking the perilous journeys at the hands of people-smugglers.
The EU is better placed than individual member states to manage such a system if it could only bring itself to do it in the face of anti-immigrant sentiments across Europe. While this would take a little while to establish, it is an obvious way of bringing some order to the present chaotic conditions and might reduce irregular immigration in the long run. It would certainly reduce the horrific number of deaths by drowning.
Secondly, the Commission must deal with the difficulties faced by individual EU countries. The reason there has been a backlash against migration throughout the Union is that, rightly or wrongly, voters in virtually every country resent the presence of migrants both black and white, including east Europeans from newly-acceding EU states.
It would be sensible to consider introducing some form of quota system and, more radically, national ceilings on immigration based, Malta would argue, on population density and territorial size. This would also tie in with proposals for overdue changes to the iniquitous Dublin agreement, thus removing the current unfairness of a system that penalises countries like Malta.
Alternatively, if renegotiating the Dublin II agreement meets resistance, the fall-back must be some form of mandatory relocation system that takes due account of the unique difficulties faced by front line states such as Malta, Bulgaria, Greece, Cyprus, Spain and Italy.
Last, as a longer term investment in change, greater EU development aid programmes to the mainly African countries of origin must continue to be encouraged. EU leaders’ commitment to the need for Europe to turn its mind to its pressing migration problems must be reawakened. It is a politically sensitive issue that has stoked resentment among voters throughout Europe. It is a nettle which must be grasped.