Final
days of the EU’s refugee strategy
Ultimatums
keep coming, and so do the refugees.
By JACOPO BARIGAZZI
1/21/16, 5:30 AM CET Updated 1/21/16, 7:28 AM CET
No matter how hard
the EU tries to resuscitate efforts to deal with the refugee crisis,
its strategy is flatlining. And after months of missed deadlines,
mixed messages, pushback from countries, and resistance from refugees
themselves, European officials are now grasping desperately for
alternatives.
Warnings and
ultimatums have been issued and lines drawn on a regular basis. The
latest came this week from European Council President Donald Tusk,
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker and Dutch Prime Minister
Mark Rutte, who all said the final countdown clock is ticking on
whether the EU can achieve its migration goals.
“We have no more
than two months to get things under control,” Tusk told the
European Parliament, warning that unless the EU could make progress
on the issue the Schengen passport-free zone would fail. “The March
European Council will be the last moment to see if our strategy
works. If it doesn’t, we will face grave consequences such as the
collapse of Schengen.”
If the past few
months are any guide, the newest deadline won’t drastically hasten
implementation of the plan or suddenly produce the outcomes that EU
officials have long promised. Rather, it could give reluctant
national leaders an incentive to wait out what looks like the final
days of a deeply unpopular policy.
Similar warnings had
been issued several times, dating back to an emergency EU summit held
last April. But in his new warning, Tusk turned up the pressure
Tuesday, citing data showing that over the Christmas period more than
2,o00 new asylum-seekers arrived in Europe every day.
It’s not even
clear whether the key EU leaders agree on the March summit as the
latest important deadline.
Rutte, whose country
holds the EU Council presidency for the next six months, told the
Parliament Wednesday those numbers “aren’t sustainable. We are
running out of time. We need a sharp reduction in the coming six to
eight weeks.”
Juncker said
Wednesday he found it “personally rather painful” to have to keep
talking about how measures agreed by the EU had not been implemented.
But it’s not even
clear whether the key EU leaders agree on the March summit as the
latest important deadline.
Juncker indicated he
wants a solution in February, and said he would ask Tusk to prolong
next month’s meeting of EU leaders so that they would have enough
time to tackle migration. The EU’s migration commissioner, Dimitris
Avramopoulos, also told MEPs that “the goal is to see tangible
results by the European Council in February.”
Mixed messages
Juncker and Tusk
have rarely been on the same page throughout this crisis, and have
often been at odds over how to proceed. While the Commission
president has long pushed for EU countries to take in refugees, Tusk
has focused on the need to better protect the bloc’s borders.
Regardless of the
timeline, few see any chance to fix in one or two months what has
been failing since May, when the agenda on migration was presented by
the Commission.
“From now until
March, we could see an extremely limited development on the hotspots,
possibly also on the money for Turkey and maybe a few more people
will be relocated,” said Alexandra Stiglmayer, a senior policy
analyst at the European Stability Initiative, a think tank. She was
referring to the centers set up in Greece and Italy by the EU to
identify refugees and to the €3 billion pledge to Turkey that is
now gridlocked because of grievances of the Italian government.
A man holds his
young child as migrants wait in queue to board a ferry n Lesbos,
Greece
A man holds his
young child as migrants wait in queue to board a ferry n Lesbos,
Greece
“So far all the
attempts to find an EU solution have failed,” Stiglmayer said.
The data show no
mercy in illustrating the depth of that failure.
Only 331 refugees
out 0f 160,000 have been relocated so far under the Commission’s
plan. On Tuesday, Italy opened its third hotspot, in Sicily, out of
the six it should have operational by now. In Greece, only one out
five planned hotspots, in the island of Lesbos, is fully functioning.
That didn’t stop
Avramopoulous from assuring in an interview Tuesday with the German
newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung that those hotspots in Greece and
Italy will be ready in four weeks at the latest. He also warned of
increased refugee flows in the coming months.
All these problems
have triggered a blame game: The Commission faults member countries
for not backing their summit promises with actions; national leaders
blame the Commission for insisting on proposals — such as the
unquestioning acceptance of asylum-seekers — that they consider
politically impossible to implement.
The Commission’s
plans were further knocked off course by unforeseeable events such as
the Paris terrorist attacks and the New Year’s Eve alleged mass
sexual assault in Cologne, Germany. In the Cologne incident,
accusations that asylum-seekers were among the perpetrators have
intensified an already volatile debate on refugee policy in Germany.
Policy trial
balloons
In Brussels,
officials are floating ideas to save what can be saved. The most
recent proposal under discussion is a revision or even scrapping of
an EU policy requiring that asylum claims be processed by the country
in which a refugee first arrives — a regulation that strains the
frontline countries of Greece and Italy.
The Commission is
expected to put forward a review of the so-called Dublin Regulation
in March but EU officials insisted that any discussion of the plans
at this point is pure speculation.
It is “very
premature to talk about what the proposal will be,” a Commission
spokesperson told reporters on Wednesday. Analysts and officials warn
that it would take months, possibly years, to find an agreement on
such a revision.
For now the
attention is mainly on a Commission proposal for a European Border
and Coast Guard
“In the past it
has taken a long time to negotiate even small changes in asylum
legislation,” said Elizabeth Collett, director of the Migration
Policy Institute Europe, a think tank.
Also in the pipeline
is a proposal on legal migration aimed at reducing asylum-seekers’
reliance on irregular routes. But for now the attention is mainly on
a Commission proposal for a European Border and Coast Guard, which EU
leaders agreed to in principle in December. But it won’t receive
formal approval until this summer — well after the make-or-break
deadlines spotlighted this week.
“The Parliament
and Council need to rapidly conclude negotiations” on the proposal,
the Commission said last week.
One diplomat was
cautiously optimistic about that process: “I expect it to be
approved but with significant changes, so it will not be easy.”
Missed deadlines
Other deadlines have
already fallen by the wayside, as the Commission admits.
EU countries agreed
last summer to resettle from outside the bloc a total of 22,504
people by the end of next year.
“Based on the
information received from member states and associated states, 5,331
persons were due to be resettled under the scheme in 2015,” the
Commission said last week. “At the end of last year, the Commission
has received confirmation that only 779 had been effectively
resettled.”
In October, a
meeting of leaders along the Western Balkan refugee route agreed for
“Greece to increase reception capacity to 30,000 places by the end
of the year.”
But Greece is still
in the process of setting up 11,500 reception places, well below the
target.
In June, countries
agreed to relocate 40,000 refugees to countries across the bloc. By
the end of July, they had agreed only on how to relocate 2,256.
“We are almost
there,” said Avramopolous. “The remaining 8,000 will be allocated
by the end of this year, by December.”
Six months later the
figures have not changed.
Authors:
Jacopo Barigazzi
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