European Union offered deal over asylum migrants

ANDY JALIL -
andyjalil@aol.com -

The head of the European Parliament Antonio Tajani said recently that countries in the EU who refuse to host refugees could instead pay more for EU migration and development projects in Africa. The proposal signals a possible compromise to end a bruising dispute in the bloc. The migration standoff has divided southern and eastern EU states as well as richer countries such as Germany since 2015, when more than one million refugees and migrants from the Middle East and Africa reached the bloc’s border.
But the tone of the discussion changed recently after years of one camp insisting that all EU states must take in some migrants and the other side rejecting the plan. “No relocation – (then) more money for Africa,” parliament president Tajani said when the bloc’s 28 national leaders held discussions the last time about migration. “This should be a good compromise. It’s better to have an agreement with a compromise than no agreement.”
Mediterranean arrivals of migrants and refugees were below 100,000 before the end of last year, according to United Nations data, a far cry from the 2015 influx that caught the bloc unprepared and overwhelmed security and other public services. The EU has since tightened its external borders and has also become more restrictive on granting asylum. It has sealed deals with countries from Turkey to Libya to keep a lid on migrants departing their territory by sea for EU shores.
It will further step up returns and deportations of those who reach Europe but do not qualify for asylum, a joint statement had said. The bloc will seek to build “a broader partnership” with countries along the migratory routes, mainly in North Africa, including to crack down on people smugglers.
A surge in support for anti-immigration, populist and nationalist groups has continued to grow across the continent. Immigration remains a contentious topic in some EU countries.
However, as migration numbers have slowed – asylum applications in Germany, for example, fell for a second year in a row – a deal between the EU’s members should be easier. The eastern, formerly communist states like Poland and Hungary remain adamant that they will not allow in any refugees from certain countries.
Germany, France and the Netherlands, which had previously demanded solidarity from all EU states, may be more open now to allowing their reluctant peers to buy out of the refugee distribution scheme as a way of sealing a deal. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas told his EU colleagues recently: “We cannot force (other countries to take in refugees), but those that do not do so could possibly contribute in another way such as in Africa. Everyone needs to take on some responsibility that we all have.”
Any political agreement is likely to take more time, diplomats and officials said, not least because Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and the Eurosceptic Italian government have built their political clout on an anti-immigration line and criticism of how the EU has handled immigration.
At this point in time, the EU could certainly do without any in-fighting when its major powers have their own problems. France has seen its president hit new lows after two months of weekly gilets jaunes protests.
Prior to that Italy had a fall-out regarding its 2019 budget that violated EU spending rules while Germany will be concerned about its slowest economic growth in five years.
Orban has endorsed fellow anti-immigrant European governments and criticised France and Germany in blunt terms, saying he “must fight” Emmanuel Macron. Speaking recently at a news conference, he gave full support to an Italian-Polish initiative to form a Right-wing alliance for European Parliament elections due in May, in which he wants anti-immigration parties to gain a majority.
Orban identified as an adversary French President Macron, whom he called the leader of pro-immigration policies in Europe. “It’s nothing personal, but a matter of our countries’ future,” he said of Macron. “If what he wants with regards to migration materialises in Europe, that would be bad for Hungary, therefore I must fight him.”
He also said he saw no chance for a compromise with Germany, saying, German politicians and its media had attacked him, often brutally, exerting undue pressure on him to admit migrants. Hungary’s goal, he said, was to gain an anti-immigrant majority in the European Parliament, then in the European Commission, and later, as national elections changed the continent’s political landscape, the European Council. (The author is our foreign correspondent based in the UK. He can be reached at andyjalil@aol.com)