Since Angela Merkel misjudged the mood in Europe and championed an open, liberal European migration policy (Willkommenskultur), the European Union has been groping around for a solution. An EU-Turkish deal has kept many Syrian and other refugees using the eastern Mediterranean route out of the EU. But this agreement has only served to shift the focus to the central Mediterranean, where Italy has borne the brunt.
Operation Sophia, which succeeded Operation Triton in 2015, was originally launched by the EU with the aim of building a better understanding of smuggling activities from Libya into Europe through the Mediterranean. Despite costing €6 million in the last year, the European objective to break up smuggling networks from Libya has been an abysmal failure.
The figures are stark. At least 4,500 people died making the journey between Libya and Italy last year, a 42 per cent rise on 2015. With over 181,000 attempted crossings, the number of migrants making the journey also increased last year. But at 18 per cent this rise was smaller than the increased death toll. A further 2,150 have died so far this year.
Just think of it. In the last 18 months about 6,500 bodies have drowned within roughly 160 kilometres of our shores. It is surprising, and fortuitous, that their macabre remains have not fetched up on our tourist-populated beaches.
The uncomfortable truth is that Operation Sophia has not in any meaningful sense deterred the flow of migrants. It has not disrupted the smugglers’ networks. And it has not impeded the business of people-smuggling on the central Mediterranean route.
On the contrary, an unintended consequence of Operation Sophia’s destruction of vessels – more than 450 boats have been destroyed – has been that the smugglers have adapted to the new situation. They have been sending migrants to sea in unseaworthy vessels, leading to an increase in deaths. The traffickers’ business model has changed.
It is now very rare for boats capable of transporting more than 100 people to leave Libya. Instead, inflatable boats are being picked up 12 miles off the coast, rather than larger vessels of perhaps 500 or 600 people that are capable of reaching the centre of the Mediterranean without sinking. As a result, the crossing has become more perilous. An EU parliamentary report found that dinghies accounted for 70 per cent of all boats leaving Libya, thus raising the risk of death.
Italy has been bearing the brunt of the migration problem through the central Mediterranean. Malta owes it a great debt. Italy finds itself in a cleft stick. Annoyance starts with the deal struck with the EU three years ago to allow Operation Triton patrol vessels to unload all the migrants they rescued off Libya into Italy. The same privilege was given to naval vessels, as well as to charity rescue boats.
The deal which the EU has reached with Libya – if it holds – will make it very difficult for people smugglers to operate
The use of Italian ports has become a touchy subject with Italian voters after 94,000 migrants arrived this year, up 11 per cent on last year. A further irritation is caused by the Dublin regulations, which insist that migrants seek asylum in the first European country which receives them.
Italy is running out of patience with its neighbours, principally France and Austria. Hundreds of migrants arrive in Ventimiglia, on the French border near Nice, in an attempt to reach France. But of those who make it across the border, 25,000 have been sent back by French police since the start of last year.
This has turned Ventimiglia into Italy’s Calais and made it the focus of a growing reluctance up and down Italy to look after the 200,000 migrants now packed into reception centres since the arrival of 180,000 last year and more than 90,000 this year so far. Similar problems exist on the border with Austria in the Brenner Pass, where Austria has indicated it may send troops to prevent entry.
Fortunately, there has now been an unexpected breakthrough. Following talks held by President Macron in Paris, Libya’s Prime Minister, Faiez Serraj, head of the UN-backed unity government, and its most powerful military commander, General Khalifa Hafter, who is backed by a rival Libyan government based in Tobruk, have agreed to a ceasefire. This is the first substantial attempt to halt hostilities since the conflict erupted in Libya five years ago.
The two men have also promised elections next year to stop years of militia-fuelled chaos which has turned Libya into a failed State and allowed traffickers to operate undisturbed, dispatching more than 90,000 migrants this year and putting Italian migrant centres under intense pressure.
Most importantly, Faiez Serraj, has asked Italy to send its navy to help the Libyan coastguard. Under the deal, the navy will help the coastguard as it picks up migrants within Libya’s 12-mile territorial waters and takes them back to shore. This will mark a potential turning point in how Europe deals with the migrant crisis in the Mediterranean. The Italian Navy will be able to confront the traffickers who have sent hundreds of thousands of migrants sailing towards Europe in ramshackle boats and dinghies.
At present, the majority of migrants sail into international waters to be rescued by charity boats or the Italian coastguard. Critics have accused charity NGOs of operating a ‘taxi service’ for migrants. Until now the stretched Libyan coastguard has been the only authority taking migrants back to shore.
Thus the deal which the EU has reached with Libya – if it holds – will make it very difficult for people smugglers to operate. But by teaming up with the Libyans, Italy is also facing accusations of helping their coastguard to force migrants back to migrant camps, where rape, torture and slavery are commonplace.
Improvements in Libya may herald a change in the scale of the EU’s migration problem and a greater ability for it to control illegal migration. But the problem of migration is not over. It would be wise for the EU to brace itself for the eventuality of a collapse of the strained EU-Turkish deal in the eastern Mediterranean which has kept so many Syrian refugees out of the EU over the past year.
Moreover, even if only a fraction of the climate change predictions are true, much of Africa will be trekking towards Europe in 20 years’ time. The EU needs to start thinking more clearly about what that means for its frontiers.
Tackling the EU’s migration problems on a multinational basis has led nowhere. It has exposed the EU’s weakness in acting together on any major issue. It is always assumed that the EU has a capacity to act strategically, which in reality it doesn’t possess. It is by necessity a legalistic, technocratic organisation whose complex decision-making processes exclude political steps.
Recent developments in Libya and the deal with Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean – if it can be sustained – offer a rare opportunity for the EU to develop a coherent and sustainable long-term plan to act strategically on immigration and to reverse the recent rise of populist politics. Will it grasp it?