A week which saw European leaders agree on a system of mandatory migration quotas and a large increase in funds to humanitarian agencies still ends with a sense of disappointment. Europe is no closer to unity on key issues.
Before the start of Wednesday’s emergency summit in Brussels, European Council president Donald Tusk warned that the most urgent question facing Europe was how to regain control of its external borders.
Failure to do so, he said, would put the very future of the Schengen agreement at risk, as “millions, not thousands” of potential refugees continued in their attempts to reach Europe.
Yet by the end of the summit, there was no agreement on proposals put forward by the European Commission for a pan-European border and coastguard.
Leaders did agree to increase funding and resources for the EU’s sea patrol agency, Frontex, and Europol, but very few other specifics were offered.
Joseph Muscat has said he is fundamentally opposed to the idea of a border guard, as frontiers should remain the responsibility of individual nations, though he did concede that the EU should provide national governments with help protecting their frontiers if they needed it.
The most noteworthy outcome of the summit was an agreement to increase funding to humanitarian agencies in the Middle East by at least €1 billion, and a “substantial increase” in funds to Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey.
The funding responds to the urgent needs of some 2.2 million Syrian refugees living in rapidly deteriorating conditions in camps in the region. It does not, however, answer the question of how to deal with the ever-increasing number of people travelling to Europe.
So-called ‘hotspots’, teams of European experts that could be quickly deployed to identify, register and fingerprint asylum seekers, are so far the only proposed solution.
The agreement by home ministers on mandatory quotas for the relocation of 120,000 migrants, of which Malta will take in 129, was seen as positive, yet it comes in the context of fierce opposition from four Central European countries.
The so-called Visegrad Group was outvoted in a rare and divisive qualified majority decision, and Slovakia has suggested it may take the issue to court.
The EU is simply throwing money at the problem in the immediate region
Two major parties in the European Parliament are now debating whether to suspend Hungary and Slovakia.
Moreover, the figure of 120,000 pales in comparison to the estimated 800,000 to 1 million refugees that Europe may eventually need to cater for, as Mr Tusk said on Wednesday that “the greatest tide of refugees [was] yet to come”.
Integra Foundation director Maria Pisani described as “pathetic” the EU’s failure to come up with a comprehensive plan to resettle migrants directly from affected regions, cutting off the people smuggling industry.
“It’s more of the same,” she told the Times of Malta last week. “The EU is simply throwing money at the problem in the immediate region, maintaining a policy of containment and focusing on securitisation of borders.”
There is an argument that the summit was never intended to provide the magic pill that observers were hoping for. Mr Tusk himself acknowledged that the agreed measures would not end the crisis.
Leaders will therefore be looking forward to the next council meeting on October 15, before which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will visit Brussels for key talks with EU officials.
More important still could be the Valletta Summit on November 11, which Dr Muscat has said must “lay the foundations for a new system to manage this new phenomenon”. The conference will bring to the same table the leaders of the most concerned countries of origin, transit and destination in Europe and Africa.
In so doing, it will go some way towards addressing criticism – including by the Maltese government – that Europe is failing to truly recognise migration as a global phenomenon.
The agenda is expected to centre around the root causes of migration and on working with origin countries on peace, stability and development.
The hope is that it can lead to innovative and long-term re-sponses beside and beyond the short-term humanitarian approach.
It will also hope to make progress on improved return and readmission agreements between EU and African countries, without which thousands of migrants remain trapped in limbo.
In the light of last week’s events, however, it remains to be seen whether Europe can rally in time to develop any true sustainable and long-term solutions.