Yves here. Perhaps I am reflexively contrarian, so I hope readers in Europe and/or those who know the Middle East and North Africa will weigh in to sanity check this article. On the one hand, it seems entirely credible that a policy of handing dough to foreign countries to have them keep their emigrants well away from your territory is a recipe for at best incompetence, and at worst cheating. If this regime were meant to be serious, one would expect the moneybags to have some supervision or audit rights. And there also needs to be a way to come up with baselines, as in what would migration have arguably been ex the intervention? For instance, famines and serious floods often lead the afflicted to decide to relocate, and abroad may look like the best of bad options.
On the other, the piece carries an undertone of far too much distaste for migrants to the EU, reminiscent of Jospeh Borrell’s much criticized “garden and the jungle” remarks. Not only is that jarring in and of itself, but the belief in European superiority is made explicit in the handwringing about European values.
Perhaps I expect too much from a short piece, but you’ll see it quickly move past its mention of the 2015 refugee crisis. My understanding it that was largely due to magical thinking, something that has become pervasive in Western elites. Yes, Syrians were in general very well educated and given some effort at assimilation, particularly language training, skill identification and job matching, Germany and other countries could have done well by doing good: getting new young workers to compensate for declining birthrates while also alleviating a humanitarian crisis. But the decision to let them in, and in very large numbers, with few structures in place to help them get settled and become productive, was a recipe for disaster.
So, and again I may be reading more into this article than is there, I infer the author and many (most?) in EU policy circles reject large or even medium scale assimilation schemes, when my impression is that the EU has not made a serious go at carefully designing and implementing one.
By Barah Mikaïl, Associate professor, IE University. Originally published at The Conversation
The EU’s approach to managing migration flows depends heavily on outsourcing border control to non member countries, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Many far-right politicians enthusiastically back this policy: 19 nations recently signed a letter calling to go “beyond the EU’s migration pact” and further externalise migration control.
This is, theoretically, a two pronged approach: the EU sends money to MENA governments in order to prevent the number of departures from their own borders and improve living conditions within them, thus discouraging people from leaving in the first place.
However, much of the money is funnelled instead into violent, even deadly, anti migratory measures that take place outside the EU’s jurisdiction. These outsourced humans rights violations contravene the EU values of freedom, justice and dignity, and jeopardise its influence as a values based power.
This short sighted, costly and inadequate strategy ultimately undermines the EU’s credibility and effectiveness on the global stage, damaging the bloc’s regional and international standing by underscoring its ingrained hypocrisy. It has also failed to reduce the number of irregular arrivals or address the root causes of the problem – instead, it has endangered, ruined and ended tens of thousands of lives.
The loss of life is staggering: according to 2023 research commissioned by the EU itself, five migrants died trying to cross the Mediterranean per day in the period of January to June 2022, and 29,734 people have been recorded as missing since 2014.
An Expensive, Ineffective Strategy
Europe’s externalised border control can be traced back to the early 2000s, but gained real momentum during the 2015 migrant crisis. Since then, huge sums have been sent to neighbouring countries under the guise of “migration management”. Chiefly, this includes the Asylum, Migration and Integration Fund, which amounts to €9.9 billion for the period of 2021 to 2027, a significant increase from the €3.137 billion allocated over the 2014-2020 period.
Specific deals and partnerships have also been made. These include the 2016 EU-Turkey Deal, a €6 billion agreement aimed at curbing migration but effectively increasing Turkey’s leverage over the EU. A €210 million package was also paid to Mauritania to encourage it to curb migration, €7.4 billion was paid to Egypt in financing until 2027, and €1 billion in financial aid was promised to Lebanon for the period 2024-2027.
Despite these financial commitments, the number of irregular entries into the EU continues to rise. As of November 2023, the International Organization for Migration had recorded a total of 264,000 irregular entries, a clear increase from 2022 (190,000) and 2021 (150,000).
Cruelty and Suffering
Investigative reports have recently been published on “desert dumps” in Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. This practice involves driving migrants (including children and pregnant women) into remote desert areas and leaving them to fend for themselves.
While Brussels denies any involvement, articles state that “two senior EU sources said it was ‘impossible’ to fully account for the way in which European funding was ultimately used”.
By outsourcing to autocratic regimes who are prepared to carry out such cruel methods instead of addressing the root causes that drive migration, the EU has compromised its values, fostered internal divisions, and damaged its human rights reputation. It undermines the EU’s ability to advocate for principles like human rights, democracy, and the rule of law, diminishing its moral standing and strategic autonomy.
One example of how this has played out is the EU’s cooperation with Libya to stem migration across the Mediterranean. Despite well documented human rights abuses in Libya’s detention centres – including torture, forced labour, and sexual violence – the EU has provided funding and training to Libya’s Coast Guard to intercept migrant boats and return them to these abusive conditions.
Over the last few years, reports have emerged of severe abuses against migrants in Libya – including men being sold at slave auctions – highlighting the extreme cruelty faced by migrants trapped there. However, the EU has continued its partnership, justifying it as a way to save lives at sea while turning a blind eye to the nightmarish reality migrants face once returned to Libya.
Weaponising Migration
Entrusting key security functions to unstable or autocratic regimes also leaves the EU vulnerable to political crises and manipulation of migration flows.
During the 2011 Arab Spring, for instance, embattled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi threatened to unleash a “flood”of migrants into Europe if it kept supporting protesters. Since then, Turkey has also adopted a similar strategy, despite receiving an additional €3 billion on top of the 2016 migration deal. Outside the Mediterranean, Belarus has been accused of similar practices on its border with Poland in retaliation for EU sanctions.
EU funding is therefore easily manipulated by governments seeking financial aid. The belief that money alone can dissuade people from leaving their countries overlooks the fact that fundamental changes are needed from within these countries. Once the money is sent, there is little to prevent authoritarian governments from using the funds to consolidate their regimes rather than implementing reforms that benefit citizens.
The EU’s Self Sabotage
By compromising its values, creating dependencies on undependable powers and exposing itself to risks, the EU diminishes its ability to act as a strong and convincing leader on the international stage. If the EU is to maintain its credibility, uphold its principles, and enhance its global influence, it needs to take a principled and holistic approach to migration management.
The idea that harsh, externalised migration deals can appease or keep a lid on far right sentiments may also prove delusional: rather than addressing the root causes of migration or upholding its liberal values, these reactive measures risk further damaging the EU’s credibility in the eyes of its own citizens and the international community. This deflated power, coupled with a blatant inability to uphold its values, is fuel to the fire for far right parties and their allies.
To uphold its values and enhance its global standing, the EU needs a more balanced and principled approach to migration management. There are many ways it can do this: backing meaningful democratic reforms in MENA states; establishing stronger accountability in migration management, and, crucially, opening up safe routes in order to reduce migrants’ reliance on irregular routes and human smuggling networks.
The current strategy is failing dismally on all counts. It amounts to little more than throwing money at the problem, money that could, if applied properly, prevent loss of life, improve the living standards and economies of MENA countries, and reduce the incentives to leave them in the first place.
18 comments
Comments are closed.
Yves Smith’s headnote and Barah Mikail’s brief article get to the point, although at what might be called a “Europewide” level. As ever when dealing with Europewide institutions, things get murky. Some countries like Italy mainly want more control over the frontiers. Some countries don’t want immigrants. Those “new European” countries north and east of me aren’t exactly welcoming.
The scandal is as Mikail outlines it: Ursula and her pals show up in places like Tunisia and Egypt and throw money to stanch the flow.
Of whom? There are plenty of Tunisian, Moroccan, and Egyptian immigrants here in the Chocolate City. They tend to blend in quickly. Mom tends to wear the veil and the long dress. The kids go to Italian schools (and the headscarves become scantier and scantier).
The local scandal is Meloni and the deal with Albania for some kind of overpriced holding facility in Shengjin, Albania. No one is sure how many it will hold (a few hundred?). For how long (months?). And what if the asylum seeker wins a review? But money is sloshing around, meaning the inmates will cost more to keep in Albania than if they were brought into facilities in Italy. So it’s some elaborate swamp to get around the Dublin rules for migrants and refugees.
The biggest question is whether any of these schemes are even legal, Some Italian journalists insist that they go against European law. Certainly, deporting people without reason does so (and is going on).
As ever: If the imperial powers hadn’t wrecked countries, people wouldn’t be fleeing collapsed economies and the secret police.
I found Milo Rau’s New Gospel film highly illustrative of what happens to poor African immigrants in Italy. I’ve also watched other documentaries in the past about the plight of Black African immigrants attempting to enter Europe (eg through Spanish territory), and then if they manage to, having to maneuver the intense racism and rejection they encounter. I’ve witnessed this myself in Berlin with African asylum seekers, whose situation is dire largely as a result of policies not allowing them to work.
Gaddafi may have accurately predicted that his death would unleash a wave of immigration from Africa to Europe and even allow Al Qaeda to take over Libya, but he could not have foreseen the creation of an EU-funded dictatorship.
I think that’s exactly what he would have expected.
” The current strategy is failing on all accounts.”
Yeah, the EU also largely brought this upon itself by undermining public interests and supporting US foreign policy: destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Ukraine, AFRICOM, etc. This has created a huge crisis not seen since WWII.
But the EU is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Empire Inc. – they do as they are told and lick boots on command. (or take massive bribes)
https://www.cato.org/commentary/americas-regime-change-wars-created-europes-refugee-crisis#
Indeed, that line about Europe’s diminishing “strategic autonomy” was a hot one.
Wonder how much that came to be due to diminishing french influence in the EU project.
Sure, the nation is not a saint as seen by it’s continual meddling in Africa.
But i can’t help feel that during the cold war at least France was looked at for a third way between anglo capitalism and soviet communism.
To which last comment you need to add “wrongly” somewhere. France had been in NATO since 1949 and in the European Common Market from the start.
Plus the Cold War ended in 1989, thirty-five years ago. What’s France been doing in Africa since then? Doling out teddy-bears stuffed with sweets?
Mass migration is globalist violence against the increasingly state-less native populations of Europe.
No one asked for this.
The EU needs to be liquidated along with the globalist regimes of Europe and their members tried for crimes against humanity. Meanwhile, humane mass remigration can begin.
There is no less-bloody alternative that I can see.
If you want your society to look like Scandinavia, then your society is going to have to look like Scandinavia. Magical thinking about this is based on a denial of the actually existing human condition.
As I write, the world champions of Scandinavian virtue signalling are reported to be instituting stop-and-frisk to prevent further refugee violence.
Detain and deport would be a better policy, and would reduce the country’s carbon footprint.
The reason of the immigration crisis in Europe is the untold deprivation the immigrants are suffering in their countries of origine including Africa and West Asia. This deprivation is due mainly to the crurent world order which cripples these countries with mostly unproductive debts and then forces them to follow the IMF-designed roadmap to serfdom.
Without addressing these causes, the immigration crisis is unsolvable problem.
The problem of Europe is that it is a vassal state of the US in the current world order and as such it can do nothing to change these causes, which serve the most powerful vested interests in the US.
The immigration crisis is just one proof that this world order is unsustainable.
Until the advent of an alternative world order Europe will have to live with this crisis, while hoping that the US will not bleed it dry in the meantime.
How exactly does this influence the EU’s value based power? Few nations have any compunctions about securing their borders and simply telling people they don’t want inside (for whatever reasons) to get lost.
Ultimately the Europeans will have to choose: do they want to virtue signal and keep the right to asylum or do they want to control migration. You can’t realistically have it both ways. And if you want to control your borders, then you should do it yourself and don’t outsource it to states which have zero incentives to ever live up to their side of the bargain.
As someone who works with “integration” of immigrants in Sweden, I can say that the first mistake most “onlookers” make is that they assume immigration policy is largely determined at the national level. The only thing determined at the national level in Sweden is the amount of asylum seekers that Sweden will accept, and the number of years (2) Sweden will pay someone to learn the language (roughly $700 a month). After that, each kommun, or “county” decides exactly how these immigrants will be “integrated” into their community. By that, I mean, each county has their own policy as to how long an immigrant can stay in an apartment (provided by the county for which the immigrant pays), and each county decides what services they provide to help the immigrant to integrate.
As an immigrated American, I often tell my Swedish colleagues that Sweden is run like a giant hair salon. Each booth (or county) is actually an independent “business” that “rents” the space of the owner “Sweden (Inc.)”. That Sweden (Inc), along with the EU, would decide to outsource their immigration process to a cheaper “3rd world” (or “jungle”) country doesn’t surprise me at all. No one, least of all Americans, understands how much all of Europe has become a neo-liberal nightmare (or dream, depending on your socioeconomic class).
The options provided by the author appear to be these:
One part of a sentence stands out: backing meaningful democratic reforms in MENA states
Not sure what that is supposed to mean. Some might interpret the meaning to be the removing/overthrow of authoritarian regimes in neighbouring countries. Hopefully that is not what is meant as that has a history of bad outcomes.
Something that might need to be clarified is that there are already safe routes for refugees:
https://help.unhcr.org/faq/how-can-we-help-you/resettlement/
So possibly the author of the piece meant to streamline and make that route bigger/easier.
Other than that then as far as I can tell it looks to me like the EU is paying protection money to neighbouring countries until the border can be better secured.
The best immigration control for EU would be stopping these wars what they and usa is doing. It blow my mind that Eu can wage wars and colonialism in these countries then wonder why these people are escaping to west, now a days alot Europeans and usa population are escaping to third world country’s because their country’s is now too expensive. USA than any other country should be called out of these wars. The whole world are heading for a very bad place that you wonder will human race even survive 10 years, west want control of third world country’s resources and they will doom us all because of their greed
Germany´s top 1 percent possess between 2-6 trillion Euros.
Official annual “cost” of “immigration” to Germany:
2018: 23 billion (7,9 billion of this transferred to the countries to “fight” the causes)
2017: 20 billion (6,8 billion)
I don´t need to tell anyone here the actual numbers spent on “defense”. And everyone knows there is no worse thing than investment into “defense” for any society.
To enable people coming to this country and make a life would cost a fraction and be to the eventual much much bigger benfit of this country than a single fucking tank. Of course in lockstep with all the other “social” spending which in fact should be called investment.
52% of refugees under “UNHCR’s mandate and other people in need of international protection come from just three countries:
Syrian Arab Republic 6.5 million
Afghanistan 6.1 million
Ukraine 5.9 million
https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/
No comment needed.
For how this plays out look at Sudan.
10 mio. domestic refugees fleeing from so-called rebel forces who have been fostered and equipped by the European Union.
This pathologic mindset you can trace to most of these cases. (Imagine Africa developing without the interferenc and terror of the EU. May be Barah Mikaïl should look into that more closely…)
According to this comprehensive HANDELSBLATT piece on the topic from 2019, German average annual immigration amounted to 1,5 mio.:
“According to the Federal Statistical Office, around 1.5 million people have come to Germany every year since 2012, i.e. before the refugee crisis. This is normal migration in a large industrial country like Germany.”
https://www-handelsblatt-com.translate.goog/politik/deutschland/migration-die-kosten-der-fluechtlingskrise/25146570.html?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=de&_x_tr_pto=wapp&_x_tr_hist=true
net figures Germany:
Year immigrant Emigrants Migration balance
2018 1.585.112 1.185.432 399.680
2017 1.550.721 1.134.641 416.080
2016 1.865.122 1.365.178 499.944
2015 2.126.954 997.552 1.139.402
2014 1.464.274 914.241 550.483
immigrants per 1000 inhabitants:
“The most current data from Eurostat is from 2017. According to this, Malta with 31 immigrants, Iceland with 24 and Luxembourg with 16 immigrants per 1,000 inhabitants are in the first three places. Germany took sixth place in 2017 with almost 6 immigrants per 1,000 inhabitants.”
Statista on EU net migration 2023:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/686124/net-migration-selected-european-countries/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_European_Union
More sheets:
https://www.statista.com/topics/4046/migration-in-europe/#topicOverview
p.s. the UN Declaration of Human Rights guarantees the right to emigration and immigration and the right for asylum. People seem to have forgotten.
Does everyone know the ‘child’s game’ of RISK?
It is simple and assumes combat between adjacent regions. Migration is occupation. The ultimate combat, in some ways.
Geography determines strategy …
To win RISK, occupy Australia. It has only one route in or out. The other players knock spots off one another…. allowing the hold out to accumulate cards and eventually ‘win’.
Except in the ‘real’ world the population of Australia is very small and only temporarilyoccupies other nations, for fun, mating and drinking.
A level playing field means loss of income and capital in the developed areas of the world.
“You will own less and less and be more miserable?”
The violence and corruption is a feature, not a bug.
The cruelty is the point. It has been outsourced to brown people, but the goal is to let their behavior act as a disincentive to immigration while pretending to be, “Sensitive new age guys.”
“The violence and corruption is a feature, not a bug.”
That´s the point!
But even critical minds constantly are talking about misunderstandings and accidents.
`This is not intended´. Oh really…
What are such statements if not media complicity in murder, torture and economic war…