A generation after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Europe is building walls again. Bulgaria has planted 50 miles of razor wire along its frontier with Turkey. Britain is fencing off parts of the port of Calais and Hungary is fortifying its 100-mile border with Serbia in a race to seal itself off from refugees and migrants heading for Europe through the Balkans. It is a race in which Hungary may win a short-term victory, but one that Europe is doomed to lose as long as it remains unwilling to confront the true scale of the crisis.
There are more refugees in Europe, and seeking to get into Europe, than at any time since the Second World War. The majority are from countries tortured by war, extremism and tyranny. Nearly three quarters of those registered this year by Frontex, the European Union’s embattled border agency, are from Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea. But the refugees cannot wait for Islamic State to fade like a nightmare, and nor can Europe. This crisis is hitting the continent’s weakest economies hardest. It is fuelling anti-immigrant extremism and defying the EU’s efforts to craft a coherent response, let alone an effective one.
On Monday, Angela Merkel and François Hollande met to announce a ten-point plan based on the resettlement of genuine asylum seekers by quota throughout the EU; and on the return of those denied asylum to countries approved as “safe”. The fact of the Franco-German summit at least reflects the importance both countries attach to imposing some order on the chaos. The plan depends, however, on the support of Spain, Portugal and eastern Europe. It does not have it. Britain, Europe’s second-largest economy and a favoured destination for refugees and economic migrants, has had no part in its formation.
“One thing is clear,” Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the German foreign minister, wrote yesterday. “The response so far does not meet the standards that Europe must set for itself.” This is true, and will remain true until all Europe’s member states examine every aspect of this emergency and agree a plan of action that satisfies the demands of practicality as well as conscience.
The refugees seeking out the weak spots along Europe’s southern borders are determined. They would not otherwise have entrusted their lives to traffickers and rubber dinghies. They are also impossible to count. Hungarian police said 2,093 people crossed the border from Serbia on Monday, a record for a single day. But as the Hungarian wall goes up, thousands more are certain to find other routes to EU territory on which to claim asylum. Further south, 33,000 migrants have landed on the Greek island of Lesbos this month alone. Germany expects to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year, twice the number expected.
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The scale of the influx threatens to overwhelm Europe’s richest country, politically if not economically. It has already processed 218,000 asylum requests this year. The equivalent figure for Britain is fewer than 30,000. As neo-Nazi protesters take to the streets, Berlin has abandoned the Dublin Regulation by which asylum seekers are supposed to apply for asylum in the first European country in which they set foot. It is processing all applicants, but cannot do so indefinitely. Chancellor Merkel’s social democratic coalition partners have warned that Germany cannot be expected to resettle more than a third of them.
The plan being promoted by Mrs Merkel and her ministers would represent a more generous and organised welcome for refugees, but at a cost the rest of Europe may not bear. The provision to return migrants to “safe” countries would in practice apply mainly to Serbians and others from EU-accession countries in the west Balkans.
It would do nothing to reduce the number seeking safe haven from the Middle East and Africa. France and Germany are determined to force other EU states to accept more from these countries on a pro-rata basis according to the size of their economies. The European Commission has promised concrete action by the end of the year and Mrs Merkel has indicated that she plans to press eastern European countries behind the scenes. She believes they must share the burden as part of the price of European membership, but she will face stiff headwinds. Hungary’s fence speaks volumes. Poland has little experience of assimilating black immigrants, or appetite for it. Slovakia has said it will only take Christians. Britain and Denmark have the right to opt out of any joint plan and have indicated they will.
There are, unfortunately, good reasons to do so. Even if France and Germany were able to engineer broad backing for their plan, it rests crucially on quotas for relocation and resettlement to work. Relocation involves telling refugees which European country is to host them rather than asking where they want to go. Yet experience shows that refugees gravitate overwhelmingly to family and economic opportunity. Resettlement is a promise of permanent abode and the right to work in Europe for successful asylum applicants. A system that guarantees it, if only to a fixed number, can only strengthen the “pull factor” that Britain has rightly argued underlies the surging migrant numbers.
The ten-point plan represents an improvement on the chaotic and arbitrary status quo, but not an adequate one. Bolder thinking that Britain can support and take part in is required, and there is no shortage of strategies that focus on curbing migration at its source rather than encouraging it in Europe.
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One would focus on processing asylum requests in refugee camps near the war zones from which refugees are fleeing. Another, backed by Professor Alex Betts of Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre, would harness refugees’ entrepreneurial energies in regions where they are already living in the greatest numbers. A third, advanced by a Californian millionaire, would create a brand new refugee nation. The fact that it is even discussed reflects failure of existing policies to match the scale of the challenge.
Over the past four years Syria’s multiple overlapping conflicts have displaced eight million people. Four million have left the country. Two million are in Turkey alone. Hundreds of thousands are in camps in Jordan and Lebanon. Those making the dangerous journey to Europe dwarf the number coming from sub-Saharan Africa. There is no sign of a slackening of the tide from the miseries of Eritrea. Together these upheavals present the EU with an unprecedented challenge to its identity, its administrative muscle and its ability to combine compassion with hard-headed problem solving. No solution will be simple or cost free but it must be clear and practical and it must involve Britain. The debate on what it should be has barely begun.