Anti-immigration
mood sweeping EU threatens its new asylum strategy
This
article is more than 1 year old
The
bloc’s migration pact, finally agreed after a decade of talks, is already in
peril as states outdo each other in efforts to get tough
Jon
Henley
Jon
Henley Europe correspondent
Fri 27
Sep 2024 12.24 BST
In 2015,
when more than 1.3 million people headed to Europe, mostly fleeing a brutal war
in Syria, the response of Germany’s then chancellor, Angela Merkel, was to say
“Wir schaffen das” (“We can manage this”), and open the country’s borders.
Less than
a decade later, and faced with a flow of irregular arrivals less than 10% of
what it was at the peak of the bloc’s migration crisis, EU capitals are
increasingly saying, “No, we can’t”. Or, perhaps more accurately, “We won’t”.
Under
intense political pressure from far-right parties in power in half a dozen
member states and advancing with almost every election in others, governments
are outdoing each other in introducing tough anti-immigration measures.
This
month alone, Germany reintroduced checks at all its land borders, France vowed
to restore “order on our frontiers”, the Netherlands announced its “toughest
ever” regime, and Sweden and Finland proposed harsh anti-migrant laws.
The mood
risks straining EU ties and could endanger not just the bloc’s new asylum and
immigration pact, recently finalised after nearly a decade of fraught
negotiations, but its prized free-movement Schengen zone.
Marcus
Engler, of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research, said:
“It’s hyperactive. It’s one restriction after another, with no impact
assessments and no evidence they will actually work. They’re clearly driven by
electoral logic.”
The
number of people recorded arriving as irregular immigrants in the EU between
January and the end of July was 113,400, a fall of about 36% year on year.
Long seen
as one of the bloc’s most open members, Germany also recently tightened asylum
and residency laws, reduced welfare benefits for some refugees and resumed
deporting Afghan nationals to their homeland for the first time since the
Taliban took power in 2021.
The
fragile three-party Socialist-led coalition, trailing far behind its
centre-right and far-right opposition in the polls, has insisted its
reintroduction of checks this month on land borders would curb migration and
“protect against the acute dangers posed by Islamist terrorism and serious
crime”.
The move
has been widely denounced as politically motivated after a series of knife
attacks in which the suspects were asylum seekers, and historic successes in
crunch state elections by the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD).
At the
European level, it was seen in many – though not all – capitals as a
potentially far-reaching blow to the 27-nation, passport-free Schengen zone,
considered one of the EU’s biggest and most economically important
achievements.
“It’s a
kind of a trap,” a diplomat from one EU member state said. “Once you introduce
this kind of measure with no real practical justification, how do you sell to
voters the notion, just a few months later, that it’s now somehow safe to
reverse it?”
Support
came from Hungary’s nativist government, which this month threatened to send a
bus convoy of migrants to Brussels in protest against EU migration policies.
“Welcome to the club,” said the prime minister, Viktor Orbán.
The
Netherlands’ new coalition, led by the far-right, anti-immigration Freedom
party (PVV), did likewise. It has this month promised “the strictest admission
rules in the EU”, saying the country “can no longer bear the influx of
immigrants”.
The
four-party government plans to freeze new asylum applications, provide only
basic accommodation, limit family reunification visas and accelerate forced
returns. It also aims to declare an “asylum crisis” so it can take measures
without MPs’ approval.
Once-welcoming
Sweden, whose minority rightwing coalition is propped up by the far-right
Sweden Democrats, has this month proposed raising the amount it pays to people
willing to return home from €880 (£665) to €30,000 each.
Stockholm
also has plans for a law obliging public sector workers to notify undocumented
people to authorities, while Finland’s coalition, which includes the far-right
Finns, wants to ban undocumented people from accessing non-emergency
healthcare.
France’s
new rightwing government – whose survival will depend on whether and when the
far-right National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen decides to back any future
no-confidence vote from the left – is also bent on a far tougher approach.
The prime
minister, Michel Barnier, this week described immigration levels as “often
insufferable”. Abolishing full healthcare for undocumented people who had been
in France at least three months, as the RN has long wanted, was “not a taboo”,
he said.
Barnier
also praised “what a Socialist chancellor in Germany is doing” on border
controls, calling it “a wake-up call for us”. His hardline interior minister,
Bruno Retailleau, said France should see “how far we can go” to institute
permanent checks.
“The
French people want more order: order in the streets, order at the borders,”
Retailleau said in his first television interview, adding that Paris aimed to
“review EU legislation that is no longer suitable”.
The
contagious new mood, visible across the bloc, does not bode well for the future
of the Schengen zone but could also threaten the EU’s new asylum and migration
pact, finalised this spring after almost a decade of negotiations.
Criticised
by rights groups who say it will increase suffering and reduce protection, the
pact aims to strengthen external borders while spreading the financial and
practical burden of resettlement.
The
Netherlands and Hungary have already said they want opt-outs. Retailleau’s
comments suggest France, too, may now be having second thoughts.
“Already,
national governments are saying it’s not enough,” Engler said. “They want new
rules to give them even more control ... Even Germany’s policymakers seem to
have concluded it won’t really work.”
Perhaps
most striking is a concerted move to promote offshore processing, along the
lines of agreements signed by Denmark with Kosovo and Italy with Albania
(together, in Rome’s case, with deals with leaders in Libya and Tunisia to
reduce departures).
Fifteen
member states, led by Austria, Denmark, Italy and the Czech Republic, have
reportedly written to the European Commission calling on it “to identify,
elaborate and propose new ways and solutions to prevent irregular migration to
Europe”.
Outsourcing
asylum reception and processing to countries outside the EU is one of the 15’s
main objectives, along with a “common approach to returns”, notably to safe
third countries or countries of origin including Syria and Afghanistan.
The
commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, has promised such an approach.
Gradually, said the EU diplomat, “the mood is changing. The language, the
policies, are tougher. We’re discussing things no one would have dared say a
decade ago.”
A pattern
is clearly emerging, said Alberto Alemanno, a professor of EU law at the
College of Europe. “A French rightwing government calling to make temporary
border controls permanent.
“A German
centre-left government de facto suspending Schengen. Migration deals à la
Italy-Albania becoming the new modus operandi. And the migration pact ready to
be renegotiated, as if it wasn’t strict enough … Who will counter this?”
Europe
clearly faces very real migration challenges, Engler concluded. “But these are
not solutions. Perhaps the influence of far-right parties has reached a
critical point – the mainstream parties have no plan, but they’re freaking
out.”
He added:
“It took several generations of politicians to build the EU as a space of free
movement and human rights. It seems the current generation of political leaders
is intent on tearing it all down in the space of a few years.”
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário