European Union’s migrant policy is lost at sea

In July 2019, more migrants drowned in the Mediterranean than in July 2015, at the height of the refugee crisis — and that despite a dramatically reduced number of arrivals. The 238 deaths are at least partly on the conscience of European politicians; the European Union badly needs a reasonable policy towards the nongovernmental organisations whose rescue ships provide pretty much the only hope to migrants stranded at sea.
If their goal was to make undocumented migration across the Mediterranean next to impossible, Europeans finally can congratulate themselves. Die Welt, the German conservative daily, recently trumpeted “The End of the Mediterranean Route.”
It has taken the EU about four years to build a system of agreements that brings the number of migrants to a manageable minimum. If one believes in the
distinction between genuine refugees and economic migrants, its construction makes perfect sense: These days, very few of the migrants crossing the Mediterranean are from war-ravaged countries where their lives would be directly endangered, so not many of them stand a realistic chance of asylum. Moroccans, Tunisians, Algerians, Ivoiriens, Congolese — under EU member states’ laws, they have nothing to seek on
European shores.
Having built up its defenses, EU stopped its naval search-and-rescue activities in the Mediterranean. Operation Sop-hia, which used to include them, is now limited to flights over the sea to monitor human trafficking. Though this effort often was dismissed as “organised hypocrisy” because it was meant primarily to deter crossings rather than pick up shipwrecked migrants, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the International Organization for Migration last month called on the EU to restart it.
That’s because no framework of bilateral deals can prevent the unwanted migrants from coming, because the hardship they face in their home countries is worse than anything they may be forced to endure in Europe. And if they keep coming, they will keep drowning; someone needs to pick them up at sea.
At this point, just a handful of nongovernmental humanitarian organizations specialise in this. Germany-based Sea-Watch e.V. runs two rescue ships, the Sea-Watch 3 and the Mare Jonio. The Spanish charity Open Arms operates a ship of the same name. Doctors Without Borders and SOS Mediterranee, both multinational organisations, pick up migrants with the Ocean Viking. That, as of this month, is the extent of help available to those trying to make the crossing.
It’s not the smallest number of NGO ships that have simultaneously plied the waters mainly between Libya and Italy, but the situation changes rapidly because the rescue vessels keep getting detained.
Italy, of course, is at the forefront of the fight thanks to Salvini, who earlier this month succeeded in pushing through the Italian parliament a decree hiking fines for unauthorised docking from 50,000 euros ($55,600) to 1 million euros. But Malta, Greece and Spain also have started various legal proceedings, including criminal ones, against the migrant-rescuing charities. The NGOs, in other words, are being harassed by EU member states on the Mediterranean frontier.
The worst ordeals take place when the rescue ships try to dock somewhere in Europe with migrants on board. The Open Arms spent 19 days at sea, unable to dock anywhere, before Italy finally allowed the 80 migrants it had on board to disembark last week. The Ocean Viking was refused entry to several European ports, including for refuelling, for 14 days before European governments worked out — also last week — an
ad hoc deal to divide up the 356 migrants it had rescued.
Such case-by-case arrangements are the order of the day in the absence of a permanent EU-based mechanism.
If the EU as a bloc is unable to agree on migration reform because of staunch opposition from the likes of Salvini and the nationalist Eastern European governments, there should be at least a coalition of the willing within the EU that would prevent the NGO ships from languishing at sea for weeks while governments work out who should take how many people.
That means designating several ports where the migrants can be brought so they can be sent on without delay to host states, according to a predetermined quota. This would have nothing to do with normalizing undocumented immigration: Those who embark on the Mediterranean journey today, given all the protections the EU has put in place, are truly desperate people. None of them are risking their lives for fun. They are doubly desperate when their leaky vessels sink far from shore, and extremely lucky when a rescue ship picks them up. The 839 of them who have drowned so far this year had no such luck.
The size of the coalition of the willing doesn’t really matter; even five or six wealthy European nations can afford to take a few hundred people a year each. Those countries that refuse to do it today won’t be governed by nationalists forever; one day they, too, will have governments that’ll be ashamed not to participate. In the meantime, if a coalition of the willing does exist, it should act willing rather than reluctant — these migrants have
already suffered enough.

—Bloomberg

Leonid Bershidsky is Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist. He was the founding editor of the Russian business daily Vedomosti and founded the opinion
website Slon.ru.