MIGRATION AND THE EUROPEAN UNION

On 2 September last year the dead body of a three-year-old Syrian boy, Aylan Kurdi, an ethnic Kurd, was washed up on a Turkish beach near Bodrum. Media coverage of this drowning illuminated the nature and dimensions of the biggest refugee crisis to affect Europe directly since the Second World War (WWII). Neither the earlier drowning of 700 people in a single incident in the Mediterranean, nor the suffocation of 71 migrants in a refrigerated lorry, found in a lay by on the motorway between the Hungarian border and Vienna, had anything like the same media impact, at least in countries remote from the crisis, such as the United Kingdom (UK). Suddenly there was agreement that something had to be done. But, what? A Turkish court has just sentenced two people smugglers to imprisonment for four years and two months for causing the death of Aylan and four other people, including Aylan’s brother and mother, through “deliberate negligence.” Driving people smugglers out of business and punishing them, is certainly part of the, “what.”

On 2 October last year I took part in a conference in Prague organised by the conservative Czech political party, TOP 09, founded in 2009 by the former Czech foreign minister and presidential candidate Karel Schwarzenberg. TOP is the Czech acronym for Tradition (Tradice), Responsibility (Odpovednost), Prosperity (Prosperita). The Belgian Wilfried Martens Centre for European Studies, and the German Konrad Adenauer Foundation supported the conference. My subject was “War Zones and Migration”.

The timing was excellent. Both the subject and the location were well chosen. The majority of Czechs do not want to accept any refugees from the Middle East. Milos Zeman, who defeated Schwarzenberg in the 2013 presidential election, rants and raves against them in the best Donald Trump style, to popular acclaim, at least outside Prague. I should add that Donald Trump is descended from German and Scottish immigrants.

Schwarzenberg, in an eloquent keynote speech, argued the opposite case. In the Czech lands, the Germans had murdered the Jews. The Czechs had then expelled the Germans. Thereafter came 40 years of communist dictatorship, which had impoverished and isolated Czech society. Most Czechs knew next to nothing about Syria and the many well educated refugees who were now heading for Europe. Czechs seemed to have forgotten their own experience of being forced to flee from their own homes – in 1938, 1948, and 1968. He on the other hand, could remember well the expulsion of his family in 1948. It was high time for Czechs to be honest with themselves. It had been mainly Germans and Jews who had developed the country. There would have been no United States without refugees and immigration, including of course, Czechs. Fear, for example of unemployment, was the basis of bad decisions. Actually, unemployment in the Czech Republic was low. Employers were looking for workers, who could be found among the refugees. They would however, have to learn Czech. Learning the host country language is another part of the “what.” Conference participants agreed with Schwarzenberg, especially Bernd Posselt, the Chairman of the Sudeten German Association (Landsmannschaft), and a former Member of the European Parliament. Thomas Masaryk, elected President of the first Czechoslovak Republic in November 1918, was partly of Slovak origin, educated initially in German, and married to an American. During the First World War (WWI), he travelled on a Serbian passport, as he sought to persuade the UK, the US, France, and Russia, to dismember Austria Hungary. During WWI the UK and France promised Greece that in the event of victory it would have a share in the carve up of the Ottoman empire. The Greek invasion, which began in 1919, turned into a catastrophe. Greek communities that had been living in present day Turkey for two thousand years were driven out of cities such as Izmir – at that time Smyrna – in conditions, which resemble Aleppo now. Eventually, as prescribed in the Treaty of Lausanne concluded in 1923, there were exchanges of population. But the poor Greek state could hardly cope. So, coping with refugees in difficult times is not a new experience for Greece.

WWII generated massive refugee crises, displacing up to 20 million people, by 1945. They can be divided into four broad categories:  Jews who had survived the holocaust and wanted to leave Europe mainly for Palestine and the US;  Former slave and voluntary labourers in Germany and countries occupied by Germany:  Eastern Europeans who had fled from the advancing Red army, or who did not want to return home for political reasons. For many Latvians, Poles etc the arrival of the Red Army meant exchanging one form of tyranny for another.  Ethnic Germans expelled from countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia between 1945-47 in acts of collective retribution that would nowadays be considered ethnic cleansing. 850,000 IDP were living in camps in Germany alone in 1947. Ethnic Germans, refugees from the east, were not always welcome in the west. I quote from a petition submitted by the inhabitants of what is now Schleswig Holstein to the British Commander in Chief in October 1945:  “Please free our land of these refugees as quickly as possible. This flood of aliens from the east is threatening to extinguish our long established Nordic character. For centuries there has been no more serious threat to our people.”

The UN (Geneva) Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Geneva Refugee Convention, GRC) was adopted by the General Assembly in 1951 and entered into force in 1954. It applied to Europe, and was thus not ratified by the US. Its scope was enlarged to cover countries outside Europe in 1967, but Turkey has not ratified the enlargement protocol. The US has. All members of the EU have ratified the GRC and the 1967 enlargement Protocol. Neither Lebanon, nor Jordan is a party to the GRC.

Article I defines a refugee as “someone who has a well founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality and is unable, or owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country; or who, not having a nationality and being outside the country of his former habitual residence as a result of such events, is unable or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to return to it.” There is no explicit provision in the Convention requiring a refugee to apply for asylum in the first “safe” country that he reaches. But Article 33 forbids expulsion or return (refoulement) of a refugee in any manner whatsoever to the frontiers of territories where his life or freedom would be threatened.

The Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Refugees from Europe was also established in 1951. It is now known as the International Organisation for Migration (IOM). Its initial mandate was to help European countries identify resettlement countries for people uprooted by the war. Gyorgy Schwartz – George Soros – was one of them. This Hungarian Jew escaped deportation to the death camps, came to the UK in 1947, and enrolled at the London School of Economics.

During my student days, I spent an academic year (1966-67) teaching English at a lycee in Toulon in the south of France. There was great tension between nearly one million white “pieds noirs” who had fled from Algeria after the war of independence in 1962, and the 100,000 Arab Algerians who were doing most of menial work such as rubbish collection. Maitre Tixier Vignancourt, an embittered opponent of Algerian independence got 5.2% of the vote in the Presidential election in 1965. I witnessed brawls in Toulon where Tixier stood as a candidate at parliamentary elections two years later. Tixier’s election campaign manager was Jean Marie Le Pen whose daughter now leads the Front National, with considerable success. Marine Le Pen supports UK departure from the EU and would like France to follow suit.

My professional involvement with refugee issues began in 1979 when “boat people” of Chinese origin were fleeing from South Vietnam after the communist takeover. Many of them reached Hong Kong which was, at that time a British crown colony. 27,000 boat people eventually resettled in the UK. My boss, a deputy foreign minister was responsible for Hong Kong, and for the UK’s relations with predominantly Muslim countries, Malaysia and Indonesia, where Chinese refugees were unwelcome. The situation there then, has echoes in the hostility in Europe to Muslim refugees now.

In 1981 I moved to Bucharest. Romania was suffering under the brutal Ceausescu regime, which was characterised by political repression and a collapsing economy. Whoever could, tried to escape. Members of the German minority were one of Romania’s few exports capable of earning hard currency. By 1989 Ceausescu had sold about 250,000 Germans to the Federal Republic, on the basis of a secret agreement, for DM3.5bn.

In the case of Romania, as earlier after suppression by the Soviet Union of the Hungarian uprising and the Prague Spring, it was unthinkable for members of NATO and neutral countries like Austria to turn away migrants/refugees: 200,000 in 1956: 180,000 in 1968. We in Western Europe made no distinction between economic migrants and those seeking asylum. The conditions in countries such as Czechoslovakia and Hungary were more than sufficient to justify permission to stay. Our policy was also based on the Universal Declaration on Human Rights adopted and proclaimed by the UN General Assembly in 1948. Article 13 sets forth that:  Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state.  Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. Article 14 sets forth that:  Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution. This is the basis of the GRC. In the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 the participating states committed themselves to simple and flexible procedures for travelling from one country to another.

From 1987-90 I was Deputy head of Mission at the British Embassy to the GDR in East Berlin. Hungary was not criticised for its attitude to refugees/migrants at that time. On the contrary: Hungary played a decisive role in the collapse of the GDR. Beginning on 10 September 1989 all GDR “citizens” were free to travel to the west. One year later the GDR was history. I should add that the vast majority of these refugees were in fact economic migrants. One of their slogans was:  If the DM does not come to us, we will go west to it. Before the Wall went up in August 1961, some 3.5 million people had fled communism in the east to liberty in the west. Some 800,000 economic migrants moved west in the eleven months that elapsed between the fall of the Wall on 9 November 1989 and unification on 3 October 1990.

At the second CSCE summit in Paris in November 1990 the Cold War was closed down and WWII brought to a formal end, one moth after German unification. As soon as the Cold War was over, aggressive nationalists such as Slobodan Milosevic started hot wars in Former Yugoslavia. 90,000 refugees came to Austria, mainly from Bosnia, just over 1% of the population. By September 1992 Croatia had accepted over 350,000 from Bosnia, not far short of 10% of the population. Last year about 90,000 refugees from Syria, Iraq etc arrived in Austria; in Germany more than one million. Austrian policy now is to limit the number permitted to stay to 1.5% of the population over the next four years.

After three years (1997-2000) as British Ambassador to Croatia, I was seconded as Deputy High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) based in Mostar, responsible for implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement. The return of refugees and internally displaced persons (IDP) was one of the most difficult tasks on my agenda. The pre war population of BiH was approximately 4 million. By 1995 100,000 were dead, one million refugees were living outside the country and two million IDP within it. By 1995 90% of the population had left their pre war homes. Today 500,000 of them still do not live in BiH but in neighbouring countries such as Austria. Most of those who have returned to their pre war homes are elderly or unemployed.

The European recovery initiated by the Marshall plan that was launched in 1948, brought unprecedented prosperity and a demand for labour that was met by guest workers in Germany and immigration from former colonies to countries such as France and the UK. Immigration has changed the ethnic composition of the population of these countries substantially:  7.5 million people living in the UK were not born there.  6% of the population of France are first generation immigrants.  There are 4.8 million Muslims in Germany, 4.7 million in France, and 2.7 million in the UK. One of them, Sadiq Khan, the son of an immigrant from Pakistan has just been elected Mayor of London on the Labour party ticket.

I have set out this history to put in perspective the challenge that now faces the EU and its member states. Bear in mind that the total population of the EU is 508 million. It is wealthy, albeit with wide variations between rich Denmark, poor Bulgaria, and struggling Greece. Its democratic member states based on the rule of law and respect for human rights have been at peace with each other since 1945, an achievement without historical parallel. So, when Angela Merkel said at a press conference on 31 August 2015, with regard to the numerous refugees arriving in Germany, “wir schaffen das” – we can manage this – she must have felt that she was making a statement of the obvious. A country in ruins had managed a far greater problem in the post war years. On 1 January this year she added, “Because Germany is a strong country.” Bear in mind her unusual background. Her family moved from West to East Germany after the war. Moreover, strengthening the European Union, in particular strengthening solidarity between member states is an absolute priority, effectively the raison d’etre of the German state rebuilt since 1945. Ursula von der Leyen, the German Minister of Defence, made this point with particular clarity at a speech to the Austrian UN Association in Vienna on 3 May.

I turn now to the dimensions of the challenge. The pre war population of Syria, like Bosnia a multi ethnic state, was 22.5 million. Since the war began in March 2011 some 470,000 people have been killed. About half the population has been displaced. 2.7 million refugees have been registered in Turkey: 2.1 million in Egypt, Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, over 1 million of them – 25% of the population - in Lebanon, and over 600,000 in Jordan. 1.2 million asylum applications – 0.024% of the population - were registered in the EU last year, the majority from Syria, followed by Afghanistan and Iraq. The majority of applications were registered in just three countries – Germany, Austria, and Sweden. Food aid to Syrian refugees in countries such as Jordan and Lebanon has been cut, forcing many of them to flee to Turkey in the hope of getting to Europe.

It is not only a matter of refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. The communications revolution, which can be compared to the invention of printing in terms of its impact, means that millions of young people in autocratic, corrupt, failed and failing states such as Eritrea, Nigeria, Libya, Somalia, and Mali, know that a better life could await them in Europe. They are willing to take the most desperate risks to get to Europe. Eritreans, who face compulsory indefinite military service, imposed by a despotic regime, probably merit asylum under the GRC. Nigerian economic migrants do not.

Where there is demand, there is supply. UNODC estimates that the profit to smugglers on routes to Europe and North America amounts to at least $6.75bn. The real figure is almost certainly higher. Smugglers do not distinguish between refugees and economic migrants. The quality of the package depends on what the migrant can pay. Indicting and convicting smugglers is extremely difficult. It is important also to distinguish between smugglers and traffickers. Smugglers are paid by willing travellers. Traffickers lure people, typically young women, with offers of decent jobs in Europe. Their documents are seized, and the victims end up enslaved in prostitution or labour servitude. Trafficking victims deserve protection and asylum, even though they are not technically refugees. Trafficking in human beings is prevalent in refugee camps in countries such as Lebanon where refugees, mainly women and children, are lured into forced labour and prostitution.

The EU’s “Dublin” system for dealing with asylum applications, first agreed in 1990 prescribes that the first Member State where finger prints are stored or an asylum claim is lodged is responsible for that person’s claim. This system collapsed in 2015. Asylum seekers did not want to be stuck in Greece. They wanted to get to Germany, Austria, or Sweden. Countries such as Greece and Italy let the refugees – and economic migrants – pass, with the well-known results. Austria, which initially followed Angela Merkel, reversed its policy under pressure of public opinion. The Freedom Party candidate, hostile to immigrants, especially Muslim immigrants, polls over 30% in Austrian elections. The Alternative for Germany is polling strongly. Their arguments that Islam has no place in Germany, and that minarets should be banned are increasingly popular. The Minister President of Bavaria has proposed “upper limits” and time limited permission to stay in Germany. It seems to have escaped Seehofer’s notice that none of these proposals is compatible with Germany’s international obligations under the GRC and indeed the European Human Rights Convention. The attitude of the governments of countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic and indeed the UK, can only be described as deplorable.

It is obviously unfair that a country such as Greece should be left to shoulder the burden, especially when the refugees do not want to stay in Greece. The Dublin rules are no longer fit for purpose. The key member states, led by Germany, and the Commission, have therefore adopted a two-pronged approach – a deal with Turkey, which is host to the largest number of refugees, and burden sharing among member states.

The key elements of the deal agreed with Turkey on 18 March 2016 are as follows:  Turkey opens its labour market to Syrians under temporary protection.  Stepped up efforts by the Turkish coastguard with NATO and EU assistance to deter people smuggling.  Turkey will accept back migrants not in need of international protection.  All new irregular migrants who reach the Greek islands will be returned to Turkey  The Greek authorities will register applications for asylum – with substantial assistance from the Commission.  For every Syrian being returned to Turkey from Greek islands another Syrian will be resettled from Turkey to the EU taking into account UN vulnerability criteria.  Visa requirements for Turkish citizens will be lifted at the latest by the end of June 2016, provided Turkey meets the relevant EU benchmarks.  The Commission will transfer €3bn to Turkey to support these arrangements.

This deal is designed to:  Destroy the smugglers’ business model,  Reward Turkey for looking after 2.7 million refugees with visa free travel to the Schengen area, if Turkey fulfils EU requirements on democracy, media freedom and human rights,  Reduce the flow of migrants to the EU.

The European Commission proposed on 4 May 2016 a reform of the “Dublin” Common European Asylum System”. The key elements are as follows:  No change to the basic principle that asylum seekers should, unless they have family elsewhere, apply for asylum in the first country they enter.  A new fairness mechanism to ensure that no Member State is left with a disproportionate pressure on its asylum system.  A corrective (fairness) allocation mechanism for allocating asylum seekers by reference to a country’s size and wealth.  A contribution of €250,000 per asylum seeker for Member States that do not wish to accept reallocated asylum seekers.  Clearer legal obligations for asylum applicants, including the duty to remain in the country handling their asylum claims.  Establishment of a fully-fledged European Union Agency for Asylum. The Commission is also reviewing a list of “safe countries of origin”.

The UK and Ireland will determine themselves the extent to which they wish to participate in these measures. For the present asylum seekers get no further than Calais. The UK has however contributed more to sustaining refugee camps in countries such as Lebanon that all other Member States put together.

Organisations such as Human Rights Watch argue that the Commission’s proposals would reduce the rights that asylum seekers enjoy under the GRC. At the opposite end of the spectrum its proposals have been sharply criticised by the governments of Member States such as Poland and Slovakia, and of course by far right populists such as Marine Le Pen in France and H C Strache in Austria. In the UK, stopping immigration, and freeing Britain – or at least England – from the diktats of unaccountable Eurocrats, are the main arguments of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP), in favour of leaving the EU ahead of the referendum on UK membership on 23 June. “We want our country back,” says Nigel Farage, UKIP leader.

The EU faces three interlinked threats:  The unresolved euro zone crisis.  The refugee crisis.  Possible UK departure (BREXIT).

It is clear now that both EMU – the single currency - and Schengen – freedom of movement across national frontiers without border controls, were established as fair- weather arrangements, unable to cope with crises. Slowly but surely the Eurozone is being made crisis proof, stabilised by a combination of political will, support for weak links such as Greece, and a great deal of economic and financial expertise. The Eurozone will not collapse. The Euro is a stable currency, second in the world as a reserve currency only to the US dollar. Greeks may be suffering from high unemployment, but there is no majority for a return to the drachma. The asylum crisis is completely different, unlike any that the EU has faced hitherto. Public opinion forced even Angela Merkel to back track and pay court to the Sultan in Ankara. Austria has made contingency arrangements for border controls at the Brenner Pass, which separates Austrian Tyrol from Italian Alto Adige/South Tyrol. H C Strache however has poured oil on the fire by calling for a referendum to reunite the Tyrol, which was divided after WWI. Hostility to immigrants is eroding support for the moderate centre right and centre left and liberal political parties that have sustained the European project since its inception. Neither the centre right, nor the centre left candidate got into the second round of the Austrian Presidential election.

Enlargement, the EU’s greatest single success since the end of the Cold War, has stalled on the Croatian frontier. Membership was popular in countries such as Slovakia and Hungary, because it brought the promise of prosperity and of course freedom of movement. Nobody expected a million asylum seekers with an alien culture from countries that most people would have difficulty placing on a map. Moreover, catching up economically is tough going in countries such as Bulgaria. According to the World Bank, Bulgaria is an upper middle-income country. Try telling that to someone on the average salary of €459 per calendar month. The figure for Croatia is €753.

The British immigration argument, which is fuelling the pro BREXIT campaign, is different. Most people in the UK either did not understand the EU as a peace-building project, or if they did, saw no need for the UK, which won WWII, to be a part of it. They voted in the 1975 referendum for membership of a Common Market. By 2006, two years after enlargement, 600,000 migrants from the new MS, mainly Poland, had arrived in the UK. Net immigration from the EU is still running at over 200,000 per annum. 2.1 million people born in another EU member state work in the UK. London is booming and unemployment in the UK is low. However, Polish immigrants are believed to have held down wages and taken jobs that UK nationals would otherwise have got. These victims of immigration are UKIP’s core supporters. But Nigel Farage has also seized on the refugee crisis in the Schengen area to argue that if the UK stays in the EU, it will be swamped, not only by Poles, but also by Turks, not to speak of terrorists masquerading as asylum seekers, and sex fiends. New Year’s eve in Cologne was grist to UKIP’s mill.

Let us hope that wiser counsels prevail and that the UK votes to remain in the EU. Although it has opted out of both the Euro and Schengen, BREXIT would pitch the EU into a crisis that would be even more difficult to overcome than the other two.