Is the migrant crisis over for the EU? By Louanne

Europa, the European Union’s official website, defines the migrant crisis as: “many people in need of international protection who are coming to the European Union to seek asylum [...] due to a well-founded fear of persecution or risk of suffering serious harm”.

Today, when we talk about the migrant crisis, we refer to the one million refugees who arrived in the European Union mainly in 2015 and 2016. Most of them were fleeing from war and terror in Syria and in countries in Africa.

A migrant is a person who moves from one place to another. There are different kinds of migrants, for instance there is the immigrant who is a person who comes to live permanently in a foreign country, the asylum seeker who is a person who has left his home country as a political refugee and is seeking asylum in another. One has to be careful with the use of the words because all refugees are migrants but not all migrants are refugees. Refugees flee war, poverty, terror, oppression, etc., because their lives are threatened like in Eritrea, Syria or Somalia. The official status of the “refugee” is defined in international law with The Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, also known as the 1951 Refugee Convention, which is a multilateral  agreement that defines who a refugee is, and sets out the rights of individuals who are granted asylum and the responsibilities of nations that grant asylum. Countries which have signed this Convention (like France) consider as “refugee” any person who gets asylum status in another country because this person was in danger and was obliged to flee (cf: SudOuest ).

Graph showing drop in number of refugees coming to Europe since 2016

As the graph above shows, since 2016, the number of migrants has dropped considerably (cf. also Europa) but the heated debates between the member states within the Union suggest a major political crisis with migration being the issue that reveals underlying problems like a lack of solidarity between the European Union countries since 2015 (2015 saw the biggest spike in numbers of refugees). The website VOXEurop.eu is one of many sources that states that the crisis is not actually about migration but rather about politics. I agree with this idea because the “crisis” has not been solved and this is due to bad management of the humanitarian emergency and poor cooperation between countries and the unwillingness of most countries to deal with it in a coordinated EU-wide effort.

Even though the European Union has planned to continue to rescue and help migrants in accordance with the European Agenda of Migration proposed by the European Commission (cf. Europa), Europe is now basically closed (we are back to a “fortress Europe” situation).

The purpose of the European Agenda of Migration was to organize how the European Union manages its borders, the migrant mouvements within its territory, the rescuing of lives at sea, the tackling of the root causes of migration, the reduction of migrant flows, and the opening of safe pathways. According to the European Commission (cf. Europa), the EU saved 400,000 lives in 2015 and 2016 and 2000 traffickers were arrested. The European Union worked with five African countries to reduce the transit flow. Moreover, during the height of the migrant crisis, the European Union agreed to pay Turkey €6 billion to take three million refugees (this is called the “EU-Turkey Statement and Action Plan”). According to the Express newspaper (cf. Express), similar plans were to be made with countries in Africa. All these efforts however have been insufficient (and inefficient).

The European Union says it now wants to create “controlled centres” outside or inside its territory to process asylum requests (cf. Reuters); I wonder if this suggestion in fact hides the EU’s real intention to close its borders, as the newspaper Liberation states in its article entitled “Europe : on ferme !” Indeed, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex), has been strengthening the outside borders of the European Union (cf. Libération).

When a migrant manages to enter a European Union country, he must be relocated to a country which is willing to host him. This repartition of asylum seekers was decided during the summit about migration in the European Union with the leaders of member states. This summit took place in Brussels with sixteen European Union leaders on July 24^th the 2018. Some countries like Germany, France, Belgium and Sweden, have hosted migrants, though only 34,000 refugees have been relocated in two years. Other countries like Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which form the Visegrad group, refuse to take in migrants and are opposed to the idea of repartition and resettlement between the states. Even more worrying, the Hungarian Government passed a law on June 20^th 2018 which creates a new category of crime: “promoting and supporting illegal migration”. Any person or organization that provides any kind of assistance to undocumented migrants can be sent to jail. It “threatens to jail those who support vulnerable people” according to the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, a human rights group. I think it is a barbaric law. Vox, in an article (dated 22^nd June) entitled “Stop Soros”, denounces this law: “The Stop Soros bill is every fear about right-wing populism made manifest: an attack on basic democratic rights by an elected government, one legitimized and made popular by attacks on vulnerable minorities.”

We may wonder why the refugees choose to go to Europe rather than the Gulf States. Indeed, the Gulf is nearer and there are few cultural barriers. Moreover, the Gulf countries have vast financial resources so they could afford to shelter the refugees. But the Gulf States have closed their borders from fear of terrorism and disruption of their labour market, plus they have not signed the 1951 Refugee Convention.  However, Syrians don’t go to the Gulf because the refugees are badly treated there according to the website RTBF which published an article on that issue (cf. RTBF).

I would argue that the migrant crisis is not over for the migrants because their situation is getting worse: it is more dangerous crossing the Mediterranean and conditions in Libya are not improving.  Host countries of the EU are becoming ever more unwelcoming (and difficult to live in for many refugees). In mid-June 2018 when the rescue ship Aquarius tried to dock, no one initially wanted to accept it and the 450 people on board had to wait for days in bad conditions.

The crisis is not over for European Union either because its members seem incapable of agreeing on how to deal with this humanitarian problem, letting it turn into a major political issue which threatens European unity. Some of the member states refuse refugees completely like in Hungary with the “Stop Soros” law. Far-right parties are growing in influence because they exploit people’s fear of the refugees. Governments do not act to help the refugees more because they are afraid that far-right parties will increase in popularity (and increase their number of seats at the European Parliament following the elections in 2019). The borders of Europe are closing because of xenophobia and weak leadership.

No one said it was easy to uphold the European Union’s fundamental values (respect for human dignity and human rights, freedom, democracy, equality and the rule of law). These values unite all the member states; a country that does not recognise these values should not belong to the Union. But, today, faced with an influx of desperate people, how many countries of the EU respect them fully? How many individual European citizens? What about you?

Webography:

> Article in Europa: The EU and the migration crisis

> Articles in French from Courrier International: Migrants Europe
> Article from EXPRESS: MIGRANT CRISIS: EU should send BILLIONS in aid to Africa to stop chaos, German MEP says
> Video from REUTEURS: EU cuts migration deal after marathon talks, differences remain
> Article from Vox: Hungary just passed a “Stop Soros” law that makes it illegal to help undocumented migrants
> Article from Libération: Europe : on ferme !
> Article from VoxEurop: La crise est politique, pas migratoire
> Video from In a Nutshell : The European Refugee Crisis