EU in Chaos over How to Handle Refugee Problem

On April 19th, 800 refugees drowned when a boat capsized off the Libyan coast on its way to southern Italy. The worldwide and European shock was instantaneous. It was the last straw in a series of deadly disasters at sea in the Mediterranean. EU foreign and interior ministers met in Brussels three days later -- two days after EU leaders at a routine meeting the day after the capsize deaths had issued a cobbled together 10-point plan and discussed expanding emergency nautical rescues, destroying traffickers' boats and providing an "emergency mechanism for the resettlement" of refugees, which would address the question of how to fairly distribute refugees among all EU member states. This time, EU leaders seemed determined -- because, as the German Spiegel media outlet put it, "the credibility and the idealistic core of the European Union were at stake." Their closing statement said : "The European Union will do everything possible to prevent people from dying at sea." ~~~~~ Then, the mammoth and largely non-public EU bureaucracy took over, along with the never-ending inability of EU leaders and countries to agree on anything meaningful. Already at the first meeting, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called for solidarity with Italy's monumental task as the 'first arrival' site of refugees on EU soil. He was rebuffed. British Prime Minister David Cameron refused. A Polish representative rejected new obligations. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande were unwilling to make any clear statements. The EU tradition of making meaningless public statements and then turning to closed-door negotiation to find lowest-common-denominator agreement kicked in. The 28 governments were truly shocked about what had happened, but could not agree about solutions. ~~~~~ Stalling for time to build a consensus behind closed doors, they asked European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to come up with a political plan on the critical but divisive topic of migration. Juncker, always efficient if often misguided, on May 13, presented the Commission's "European Agenda on Migration." In the original form, the corresponding Commission documents are titled: "COM(2015) 241 final: Draft Amending Budget No. 5 to the General Budget 2015 - Responding to Migratory Pressures." First, the EC recommended directly accepting 20,000 refugees from crisis-stricken regions in the coming two years, and using a quota system to distribute them across the 28 member states. Second, the burden on EU countries like Italy, Greece and Malta, on whose coasts most of the refugees land, would be reduced -- 40,000 people were to be "taken off their hands," also with the help of a fixed quota system based on criteria like population, economic strength, the number of refugees already accepted and unemployment. Depending on the quota, 15.43% to 18.42% of the refugees were to be allocated to Germany, with the first batch consisting of more than 10,000 people. Countries like Latvia and Croatia, however, were to see only hundreds. But when the idea of a mandatory quota emerged, EU member states reacted negatively. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said : "The idea that somebody allows some refugees in their own country and then distributes them to other member states is mad and unfair." Other member states criticized the Commission for not sticking to the mandate established by European leaders at their special summit three weeks ago -- "voluntary, emergency redistribution" and a "voluntary pilot project" to resettle refugees. In effect, they agreed by disagreeing. Representatives of Eastern and Central European countries, as well as those of some Southern European countries, said they would refuse to accept any quota. The Polish delegation noted that solidarity can take many forms, and variations of this non-statement were then expressed in the following weeks. Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Spain and Romania used the same argument in voicing their objections to "imposed" solidarity. Representatives asked difficult questions : How can we make fingerprinting a requirement? Do we have to set up intake offices? How can the migrants be kept in the country if their true objective is to continue to Germany, Sweden or France? Should they be forced to remain in the country? Should they be housed in barracks? ~~~~~ Today, there is still no EU consensus on boat refugees, much less immigration. The EC Dublin II document places the burden of vetting, feeding, housing, granting refugee or asylum status and a job within 9 months to the first country where the refugee sets foot on EU territory. The EU received 626,000 asylum applications in 2014. In 2014 the number of applicants from Syria more than doubled, compared with 2013, reaching 123,000. That was 20% of the total, and far above the next biggest group - Afghans, who accounted for 7%. Migrants from Kosovo were in third place, just above Eritreans. Poor Roma account for many of the migrants from Kosovo. In 2014, EU asylum was granted to 163,000 people in first instance decisions - that is, nearly 45% of such decisions. Germany granted the most - 41,000, followed by Sweden (31,000) and Italy (21,000). ~~~~~ The wars in Syria and Iraq, as well as Afghanistan, are clearly the drivers of migration to Europe. Syria's Middle East neighbors have taken three million refugees, while millions more are displaced inside Syria. And, many migrants continue to make hazardous journeys from the Horn of Africa, often treated brutally by people traffickers and enduring desert heat and unrest in Libya, the main point of departure. War has ravaged Somalia and Italian officials believe many of the migrants are genuine asylum seekers, fleeing persecution. In the case of Eritrea, it appears many are young men fleeing compulsory military service, which has been likened to slavery. Eritrea is being destroyed by political repression, human rights groups say. ~~~~~ Dear readers, because of the dangers of sea migration attempts, half of the illegal immigrants flooding into the EU arrive in Greece -- 62,000 so far this year-- coming by land from Syria and Iraq. The other half arrives in Italy from Africa by boat -- another 60,000. The only EU effort following the April capsize drowning has been to begin Operation Triton to patrol the EU Mediterranean coastlines and turn back refugee boats, with the goal of sinking the boats before they take on refugees. EU countries with borders on refugee-generating non-EU countries are building brick and wire walls -- Hungary, Romania, Greece, Spain in its African territorial enclave. The recent near-insurrection of refugees in Calais illegally seeking to hide in trucks crossing the Channel to the UK from France is the most public example of the EU refugee crisis. It caused 6-hour delays in Channel crossings. The refugees say they got to Calais from Italy by hiding on trains going through Paris and that French gendarmes mostly waved them through to Calais. British Prime Minister Cameron says the situation is "totally unacceptable" even while saying that the UK and France are cooperating to manage the problem. That is the European Union problem in a nutshell -- no agreed action plan, each country trying to push refugees on to another EU country, and refugees taking advantage of the EU political chaos to head to northern member states where they know they will get better benefits as refugees and have a great chance of joining family already safely there, while finally getting a residency permit. The touted European Union is still an experiment -- and it keeps failing one test after another because its member states cannot agree on any issue that is even close to being important.