Daniel DePetris

The EU’s migration delusion

Just as Theresa May’s Chequers plan for Brexit was being savaged in Salzburg, EU leaders also found time to engage in their usual response when it comes to the question of migration: a lot of talk, glad-handing, and pats on the back, but very little concrete action. The summit was a two-day affair that encapsulates all of the negative connotations of the EU as an institution: slow, cumbersome, ineffective, and increasingly detached from reality.

Hours were devoted to the migration issue, that perennial crisis that has hovered over Brussels over the last five years. Based on the public statements before, during, and after the informal summit, you would be excused for thinking European leaders made a breakthrough and had finally solved a problem that has divided the bloc into a shaky and fragile house of cards. “We have achieved a lot by managing the migration crisis,” according to Estonian prime minister Jüri Ratas, “The numbers have come down a lot”. EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini was just as emphatic, pointing out that Brussels’ cooperation and investment with African governments has slowed the flow of people making the perilous journey to the European continent. But is this really the case? The EU, it would seem, didn’t get the memo from Madrid, where Pedro Sanchez’s government has been desperately appealing for more EU funds to manage the tens of thousands of migrants who have landed on Spanish shores this year. At the same time European prime ministers were chatting it up in Salzburg, the Spanish authorities were continuing to make due with what they have: overcrowded reception centres, local police and border guards escorting young Africans to get their asylum claims in order, and a system in Spain simply overwhelmed and at breaking point.

The EU may be taking credit for bringing the numbers of migrant arrivals down (and they have indeed been going down every year since 2015, when over a million landed on European soil), but a simple fact remains: Brussels is no closer to resolving the problem today than they were earlier in the year.

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