Europe stumbles over immigration challenge

As speculation rises about Britain's referendum on leaving the European Union, Alan Philps looks at when it can and can't happen and what happens next

The British government is demanding significant changes in its relations with the EU as the price for campaigning to remain in the bloc at the forthcoming referendum. Kirsty Wigglesworth / AFP

Two unconnected events caught my eye this week: Michael Semple, one of Europe’s foremost experts on Afghanistan, was musing on how the country had changed since the early 1990s. At that time, he said, entering Afghanistan was like moving into a separate world, a country utterly unconnected to the rest of the globe. Today, there is no corner of the country where people do not know how many buses they have to take to get to Europe.

Meanwhile, speculation is rising about when Britain might hold its referendum on leaving the European Union. It can’t be in winter – it will be cold and gloomy and that could make people vote against the government. But it can’t be in June, July or August either. Why not? Summer is the time of calm waters in the Mediterranean when the TV news is full of images of desperate people taking to leaky boats to reach the southern shores of Europe.

For all the sympathy shown by some Europeans for the plight of refugees from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, summer is the time when the European elite have to confront the truth that they have lost control of their borders. This fact is eating away at the European project in a way that no one would have imagined only a couple of years ago.

New Statesman, a British current affairs magazine, has predicted that the EU could go the way of Yugoslavia and the USSR under the pressure of migration and other forces.

And it is not just the summertime migrants who are on the move. About 6,000 people are arriving every day in Greece from Turkey, and 80,000 reached Sweden in September. This week, Sweden has reintroduced border controls, saying it cannot provide a roof for asylum-seekers. Chilly Finland says it is will have to house new arrivals in tents over the winter. Germany has also reintroduced border controls, putting into question the survival of passport-free travel inside 26 European countries, one of the great achievements of the EU.

The EU has three plans to contain the migrant crisis. It is asking member states to take a share of the arrivals – a plan bitterly contested by some countries and resisted by some of the migrants, who prefer to go to Sweden or Germany rather than Bulgaria. It is also offering €1.8 billion (Dh7.1bn) in aid to African countries to control mass movements of people. Ideas being discussed include creating jobs in Africa, facilitating legal travel visas and combating smuggling.

To Turkey, the EU has held out the prospect of €3bn in aid and easier access to European visas for Turkish citizens if Ankara helps stem the flow of Syrian refugees northwards.

It is hard to see how these plans can work. As for the Syrians, international law states that people fleeing a war zone should receive asylum in the first safe country – meaning Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan. But with no prospect of the war ending soon, eking out a living on the border does not offer much hope. Europe will continue to offer a solid roof and education for children.

The incentives are even clearer for the Africans. The idea that aid money can provide enough jobs for a fast-growing population does not ring true. The largest contingent of African migrants who try to cross the Mediterranean are from Eritrea – almost 4,000 a month. Yet Eritrea is a poster boy for development, winning praise from the UN for its “positive and unique story” on reaching the health-related Millennium Development Goals. The same dictatorship that has improved the health of children is responsible for making able-bodied adults flee in search of a more productive life than serving in the army. Poverty, as measured by statistics, is decreasing in most parts of the continent. But that is as much due to remittances from Africans who have made the journey north as it is to foreign aid budgets. Any cold-eyed financial planning for the poor in Africa would suggest that sending a son to Europe would be a good insurance policy.

The problem for Europe is that it is not equipped to manage migration. It has no rules for sharing out refugees, and attempts to do so by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, will be resisted by the countries of central Europe. What rules Europe does have on accommodating refugees are routinely broken. Those claiming refugee status are expected to claim asylum in the first EU country they reach – usually Greece or Italy. These countries clearly cannot cope with such numbers and so encourage new arrivals to make their way north.

Mrs Merkel made up her own rules by announcing that any Syrian would be offered asylum in Germany, no matter what the point of arrival. This was an admirable display of the humanitarian impulse, but has left German politicians fighting over how to cope with the influx.

With a population of more than 500 million, the EU can accommodate large numbers of migrants. The problem is that the much-vaunted solidarity expected to be shown among EU states is lacking when it comes to countries that have no history of immigration, such as Poland, or those with a strong and rising xenophobic and anti-­Muslim vote, such as France.

The bonds that have helped create the European Union are weakening by the day. There is no central authority with the power to address the migrant challenge, which means that individual countries are going their own way. The British government is demanding significant changes in its relations with the EU as the price for campaigning to remain in the bloc at the forthcoming referendum, still with no date fixed. Other countries may seize the opportunity to bolster their national interests.

Clearly the EU needs immigration and should accommodate refugees. It cannot become Fortress Europe. Yet in a world where everyone from Kabul to Dakar is aware that Europe is – at least theoretically – within reach, the EU’s future depends on finding a way to manage a world on the move.

Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs

On Twitter: @aphilps