Managing migration is more than ever a thorn in Europe’s side, threatening its unity and integrity. As no single solution will be enough to tackle this complex issue, there is still work to do to establish a real partnership with African countries, which will be the key to a sustainable decrease illegal migration to Europe. This article was originally published in the 8th issue (October 2017) of The Ethiopian Messenger, the quarterly magazine of the Embassy of Ethiopia in Brussels.
More than two years since migrant flows reached their peak in the EU, managing migration is more than ever a thorn in Europe’s side, threatening its unity and integrity. Migration is one of the policy priorities of greatest concern to EU citizens, along with security and economic governance, and the issue has received constant attention from the Heads of State or Government. In 2016 alone, half of the conclusions of the six European Council meetings were dedicated to migration. Considerable work has been made to address the many aspects of this multidimensional challenge and reduce flows, protect EU’s borders and tackle the root causes of migration. Despite this attention and promising steps, recent decisions reveal a lack of coherent and long- term strategy on the part of the EU to have a real impact on the problem, while African priorities have sometimes been sidelined. As no single solution will be enough to tackle this complex issue, there is still work to do to establish a real partnership with African countries, which will be the key to a sustainable decrease illegal migration to Europe.
Blocking African migration.
Over recent years, the EU has developed several tools to handle migration from Africa. When the newly appointed Juncker Commission took office in 2014, a position of EU migration commissioner, indicating that migration would be the number one priority for its mandate. In 2012, a European Union Special Representative for the Horn of Africa was appointed by the European External Action Service, followed in 2015 by the nomination of an EU Special Representative for the Sahel. The establishment of these two positions aimed to enhance the quality, intensity and impact of the EU’s engagement in these strategic regions.
Following the first phase of the response to the crisis, which culminated in March 2016 with the signing of an agreement with Turkey, the European Union shifted its focus from the Western Balkans route to the Central Mediterranean, where the migratory pressure coming from Sub-Saharan Africa was far from being under control. EU leaders vowed to reduce the continuing high number of predominantly economic migrants through the implementation of partnership frameworks of cooperation with individual countries of origin and transit. Since then, the EU has been pursuing a double objective: relieving the immediate migration pressure through formal agreements with African states to return economic migrants to their home countries, while making a deeper investment in tackling root causes of irregular migration and open opportunities for regular migration.
In late August, African and European leaders meeting in Paris in another effort to stop illegal migration discussed the possibility to set up reception centres in Chad and Niger to identify refugees that are in a situation giving them a right to asylum, hence starting the asylum procedure on African territory and allowing women and men to avoid a dangerous journey. In addition, some 50 million euros were released to finance an African joint military task force aiming at cracking down on human trafficking, drug smuggling, weapon smuggling, and terrorism – another important step in tackling the root causes of migration. In theory, these small steps forward should be seen as hopeful signs for Africans migrants and European governments. However, in practice, in the absence of firm commitments for fresh investment or EU countries taking in more refugees, the current status quo is likely to continue, especially as previous problems have not been addressed.
Unfinished business and growing tensions
While European countries are still at odds over how to deal with the number of migrants making the journey from North Africa to Italy and Spain, many decisions taken in 2015 still have to be implemented, mainly due to the security and political contexts of many European States. The refugee quota plan proposed by the Commission in September 2015 was bitterly opposed by central European countries, and so far only about one quarter of the 160,000 people the EU promised to disperse have been found a home. Fresh tensions have been rising over Austrian Defence Minister threatening to close its border with Italy, and send soldiers to guard it, while the Mediterranean country has taken in nearly 85 per cent of this year’s arrivals and has pleaded for help from other European Union nations. The question of terrorism and its intersection with illegal migration from North Africa is high on the list of concerns for many European countries, in light of the recent attacks in Spain. Germany, for its part, is determined to stop illegal migration from Africa and wants the EU to use development aid to strike border control deals with African nations in an effort to placate right-leaning German voters ahead of September’s federal election.
But more worrying are the failings in Europe’s long-term efforts to tackle the root causes of migration through development aid, opening up safe and legal pathways for genuine refugees. The Partnership Framework signed in June 2016 with five African countries (Ethiopia, Niger, Mali, Senegal and Nigeria) has little to show for, as European funds to infrastructure projects in exchange for return and readmission have led to few concrete projects. Development policy is, increasingly, in the service of migration policy, which would have been considered scandalous in the last few years, and many EU countries have been reporting the costs for hosting refugees as ODA, reducing funding available for development programs abroad and causing a drop in spending for the poorest nations.
Another crucial piece of the puzzle in achieving this is opening up safe and legal pathways for genuine refugees. Yet EU states trail behind the rest of the world in terms of resettlement from Africa. Of the almost 39,000 people resettled from Africa in 2016, only around 1,800 ended up in Europe. There is therefore little hope for the Commission’s grand resettlement campaign proposed in July 2017, offering to pay member states €10,000 for every person resettled from Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Niger and Sudan.
Time for a long-term vision
Compared to the chaos that took Europe by surprise in 2015, a more united approach for dealing with migration has emerged. But the absence of a long-term vision on migration at the European level raises questions, as all studies predict a population explosion in Africa in the coming decades. The decisions taken in 2015 and 2016 were made in response to the urgency, but EU and African leaders alike need to start thinking about what a sound migration policy should be for the next thirty years. Understanding the challenges, promises and realities of African migration is fundamental for the EU, as Europe’s security and prosperity depends heavily on what is happening in Africa.
At the moment, the vast majority of African migrants are still located in Africa, where human dams are forming in countries hosting large numbers of refugees. Economic development is the main challenge in the region and the EU despite being the world’s biggest donor, has failed to listen to Africa’s priorities, such as industrialization and infrastructure, focusing on humanitarian assistance instead. Similarly, recent EU proposals focusing on transit countries rather than countries of origins revealed that the EU’s first objective is to stop people from reaching Europe rather than keeping them from leaving their countries. The EU’s newfound will to use its visa policy as leverage to encourage third countries to speed up the readmission of migrants arriving in Italy is a further illustration of this fact. Moreover, the strengthening of controls at the Union’s external borders and returning illegal immigrants seems to be the only subjects on which consensus has been reached in Europe when it comes to migration, while a clear distinction between “good migrants”, who would be the refugees, and the “bad” economic migrants” has emerged in the European leadership. One can only hope that these conceptions will not keep the two continents from avoiding mass displacements, saving lives at sea and put in place a real cooperation.
