As it has already been pointed out, while Europe has been engaged in private consultations behind closed doors with Turkey to limit the flow of illegal migrants to the EU along the so-called “Turkish route”, the danger of a new flow of refugees coming from Africa is getting more real by the day.
In her article for The Times the former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has pointed out that there’s little doubt that the migrant crisis in Europe is a true human tragedy, but it’s also a political nightmare for Western elites. She would point out that the nationalists are exploiting the fear of refugees to undermine the EU’s position by attacking the values of liberal democracy. Albright is convinced that it is time for the EU to demonstrate that it is capable of a merciful act, while bringing the refugee crisis under control. But the United States needs to intervene to assist the EU. Albright hopes that other rich countries, including America, will also host refugees, and much more than the 10,000 that Washington has promised to take.
The current situation with migrants is a consequence of the failure of both German and EU policies, notes Archbishop of Milan Angelo Scola in his interview for La Repubblica. He has stressed the fact that once the Balkan route had been closed, a new problem emerged, namely the increase in the number of landings on the coast and the many tragic deaths, including children. Archbishop is convinced that within the time span of seven days, 13,000 people are landing on the same beach, it’s high time to come up with a project or a plan.
The EU has now recognized that it faces the largest migration crisis since the end of World War II. Last January the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has bluntly declared that the survival of the Schengen area has been endangered by the refugee crisis.
Brussels continues to come up with new plans of overcoming the challenge it is facing these days. In a bid to resolve the migration crisis, the European Commission is planning to offer “comprehensive and sustainable” partnerships with seven African countries – Tunisia, Mali, Senegal, Niger, Ethiopia, Nigeria and Libya, along with two Middle Eastern states – Jordan and Lebanon, only to refugees while the EU does not intervene within the boundaries of Africa itself. This fact has been confined by the European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos to the German nespaper Die Welt. For this plan t0 succeed, the EU wants to allocate 62 billion euros. In this respect one cannot help but wonder – is this how the modern neo-colonial system works? And if the answer is yes, will it at least be effective?
Brussels is planning to convince the above listed countries to take back migrants that have illegally crossed the EU’s borders, along with improving work regarding the protection of their borders. It’s believed that this will minimize the risks for the refugees themselves. Finally, the European Commission plans to allow the inflow of highly skilled professionals from abroad, just like it does among member states in accordance with the Blue Card program.
To maintain these new partnerships, EU officials are planning to allocate 8 billion euros in the period from 2016 to 2020, at the same time Brussels plans to mobilize private funds. Thus, Dimitris Avramopoulos has announced that in the long-term they will be able to bring up to 62 billion euros to the table.
However, it should be noted that the sum of 62 billion euros constitutes over a quarter of all the revenue the EU budget receives, and it may make the budget of Greece and other EU states pale in comparison.
While it’s clear that Brussels is not prepared to allocate tens of billions from its own budget to sustain these new partnerships, the question is why would European officials make such promises? The answer is bluntly simple – while politicians across the European Union have no clue as to how to solve the refugee crisis, they chose to do what politicians do better than anybody else – pretend that they’re solving issues. This is why the commissioner has been careful with his wording, when announcing that to maintain “these new partnerships” the European Commission will only allocate 8 billion euros until 2020. The remaining 54 billion must be provided by local businesses, without announcing where those businesses are going to take this kind of money from.
One way or another, the costs are rising rapidly. Last November, the European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker announced at the summit held by the EU and a number of African countries in Valletta that a trust fund is going to established to make the fight against illegal migration more effective. Then, African leaders voiced their concerns that the sum of 1.8 billion that the EU provided is hardly sufficient to address this complicated matter.
The reaction of the African community was summed up by the Libyan Prime Minister Faiz Saraj in his interview for Welt am Sonntag, where he pointed out that the Libyan government will not take back the refugees that have reached Europe. He pointed out that Europe must find their own means to return refugees to their homeland, since they cannot live in Libya.
Over 150,000 refugees have reached Europe through Libya, which was devastated by the Western intervention in 2011 and the consequent civil war that has continued afterward. Ever since the closure of the so-called “Balkan route”, an ever increasing number of illegal migrants are trying to reach Europe through Libya and across the Mediterranean Sea. According to various sources, there’s over one million refugees and migrants in Libya now.
It’s clear that long negotiations between the EU and its so-called “new partners” are ahead of us, since the compensation Brussels must pay to persuade Africa and the Middle East to deal with the refugee crisis. There’s a lot of desperate people in this world that flee countries destroyed by illegal Western interventions that are willing to pay large sums of money to risk their own lives and the lives of their children in a desperate attempt to get to Europe.
Therefore, as long as American and European politicians have not recognized their wrongdoings, they will seek ways to create “humane” refugee camps instead of providing assistance for the reconstruction of the countries they’ve destroyed. And the situation cannot be changed this way. That is why the victims of illegal Western aggression must demand international legal authorities to provide them with compensations for the damage inflicted upon them by the US and the EU, following the example of Iran.
Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
