Hard Borders

The Times

26 August 2017

Only the clearest possible message that illegal migration is not worth it will deter those risking their lives to reach Europe from Africa by sea

After three years of confusion there are signs that the European Union may at last be feeling its way towards a realistic response to the Mediterranean migration crisis. These signs come too late for the thousands who have died at sea and in the desert. They have yet to evolve into enforceable policies and whether they ever will is open to question, but some progress is better than none.

Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU’s commissioner for migration, tells The Times today that Brussels is considering imposing trade, aid and visa embargoes on migrants’ countries of origin to pressure them into helping repatriate those who are refused asylum. In Italy, which is bearing the brunt of the crisis, the interior minister has held meetings with mayors of key Libyan towns and cities to explore ways of policing Libya’s southern border. On Monday President Macron of France will convene talks between European and African leaders in Paris to add high-level impetus to European efforts to stem the migrant flow at source.

All three initiatives are based on the realisation that uncontrolled economic migration hurts the mainly African countries where it originates, destabilises the European countries where the migrants are heading and inflicts untold suffering on the people themselves. These should be uncontroversial ideas. Even so, they are starkly at odds with the thinking behind Germany’s decision to throw open its borders to refugees from the Middle East and beyond two years ago. Many but not all of them were fleeing Syria’s war, but that has not made it any easier for a disunited Europe to absorb them without political tension and localised strife.

Mr Avramopoulos was instrumental in the EU-Turkish scheme which, while by no means perfect, has cut the flow of migrants through southeastern Europe to a fraction of 2015 levels by giving Syrian refugees temporary status in Turkey. He appears to understand that the crisis in the central and western Mediterranean requires equally decisive action to persuade would-be migrants that the journey is not worth it.

That will in turn require border controls deep in the Sahara where traffickers bring their human cargo to Libya from Niger, Chad and Mali, as Italy insists. It will require Libyan unity, as Boris Johnson, the foreign secretary, observed after a trip to Benghazi this week. Above all it will require a message of deterrence to be sent to sub-Saharan Africa by a more resolute EU, principally through the swift and efficient return of migrants denied asylum. Just 27 per cent of migrants in this category are repatriated. Seven in ten stay. This is the single biggest “pull factor” for those considering following them from Lagos, Douala or Accra. “If people know they have no chance to stay, they are less likely to come,” the commissioner says. His words should be a mantra for any EU heads of government still on the fence about a humanitarian and political emergency they have the power to end.

The Times’ series this week on the migration crisis has laid bare Europe’s failure to enforce a serious repatriation policy, the hell of Libya’s makeshift detention centres and the use of social media by traffickers to broadcast the torture of their captives to extort money from relatives. Despite everything the lure of Europe remains, not least because, as one Nigerian migrant stranded in Tripoli said, “if you go back to your land, you will be starting from below zero”.

This is why the co-operation of countries of origin matters. Mr Avramopoulos’s plan to secure it using restrictions on aid and development as well as visas represents a new willingness to use what concrete leverage Brussels has in Africa. There should always be avenues for legal migration, but the message from Europe must be clear: unchecked illegal migration will not be tolerated.

Source: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/hard-borders-z3cf29t0h