1.1.

The migrant crisis in Europe:

Migration has been an EU priority for years. According to the results of a

Eurobarometer poll released in May 2018, 72% of Europeans want the EU to
do more when it comes to immigration.

EU leaders have been deadlocked for two years over a plan to revamp
asylum rules through a system that will relocate refugees across the bloc
when a gateway country is overwhelmed. Nations such as Hungary have
balked at accepting their share, while southern countries oppose separate
provisions to tighten obligations on handling initial registrations. At a June
28-29 summit in Brussels, EU leaders may endorse the notion of “regional
disembarkation platforms” in countries such as Libya, from which migrants
would apply for asylum before entering the EU. The proposal, included in a
draft summit statement, is intended to deter perilous journeys across the
Mediterranean, provide for rapid processing to weed out economic migrants
and allow greater leeway in determining their final destinations.

In Italy, the biggest issues are what to do with the large number of illegal
immigrants or clandestini already in the country, how to tackle the large-
scale trafficking of migrants, particularly by speed-boat from Albania, and
concern at the involvement of the mafia in the smuggling gangs. Silvio
Berlusconi, leader of the right-wing Forza Italia, and Umberto Bossi, leader
of the Lega Nord, successfully fought April’s regional elections on a
stringent anti-immigration, anti-asylum platform.
But, for a number of reasons, Italy has tended to receive small numbers of
asylum applications. Many refugees, particularly from Somalia and the
former Yugoslavia, are given work permits on humanitarian grounds, which
relieves them of the need to apply for asylum. Periodic amnesties for illegal
immigrants means that they can regularise their situation rather than apply
for refugee status. And many migrants use Italy as a port of entry, travelling
on to Germany, Switzerland or Britain, where they enter clandestinely (often
in lorries) or apply for asylum.

In France and Spain, which receive few asylum-seekers relative to the

Netherlands, Britain and Germany, asylum has not been such a big issue. In
France, the Front National, wracked by infighting, has lost its way.
Government attempts to deport illegal immigrants – provoking hunger
strikes and demonstrations – have subsided. Integrating existing immigrants
and regularising the situation of the sans papiers, many of whom may have
been resident in France for years, now dominates the debate on immigration.

It is obviously beyond the immediate power of the EU to eradicate the root

causes of all migration. But over time, if the EU wants to reduce migratory
pressure, it will have to provide more development aid, debt relief, and fair
trade, and it will need to be better equipped to prevent conflict and keep the
peace in trouble spots around the world. These objectives lie at the heart of
the EU’s common foreign and security policy.

1.2. Internal conflicts of each country

● Germany
Around 1.1 million asylum seekers arrived in Germany in 2015 - a
record number. That put great strain on local authorities, who had to
create emergency campsites.
Chancellor Angela Merkel says Germany will look after genuine
refugees, fulfilling its international humanitarian duty.

That welcome does not extend to the many economic migrants. Those
from Balkan countries like Kosovo, Albania and Serbia can now
being sent back - Germany recently classified those countries as
"safe".

Mrs Merkel has been much criticised for her "open door" policy on
refugees. The critics include fellow conservatives, notably the
Bavarian CSU party.

Last year there was an outpouring of sympathy and help for the new
arrivals from many ordinary Germans.

But there were also many street protests by the right-wing Pegida
movement, which claims to be defending Germany from
"Islamisation".

There have been hundreds of attacks on migrant hostels - usually

empty buildings allocated for new arrivals. In many cases they were
gutted by fire.

Anxiety was fuelled by the Cologne attacks, when hundreds of

women were assaulted at New Year, many of them sexually molested.
 Victims and witnesses mostly blamed gangs of migrant men from
North Africa.

Germany wanted its EU partners to accept mandatory quotas, to

spread the migrants EU-wide. France, Italy and Greece backed
Germany on that - but EU leaders as a whole decided on a voluntary
scheme.

2. Britain
A subject that always provokes heated debate, immigration divides people
into those who think immigrants create a richer society, both culturally and
financially and those who think they are a drain on public funds and a source
of tension and mistrust.

The real and imagined challenges of an ethnically diverse Britain were the
focus of a recent roundtable, hosted by the Guardian and the British
Academy at this autumn’s Labour party conference. The aim was to discuss
whether greater levels of ethnic diversity resulted in more or less social trust
and community spirit, particularly at a time when immigration is constantly
in the headlines.

The volume of immigrants arriving on our shores is increasing – a total of

560,000 arrived in the year to March 2014 – a rise of 68,000, according to
the latest data from the Office for National Statistics. This is due to many
different factors: thousands are fleeing humanitarian crises in Africa and the
Middle East, in particular Syria and Liberia, while others, including many
Europeans, are responding to economic collapse in their home countries.
According to panellist László Andor, EU commissioner for employment,
social affairs and inclusion, the Eurozone crisis has resulted in many more
people from Italy and Spain seeking a new life in the UK – far more than
individuals from Romania or Bulgaria.

The social impacts of this population movement are wide and varied.
Figures from the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM)
suggest that immigrants from the European Economic Area (EEA) between
2001 and 2011 contributed 34% more to our financial system than they took
out, while non-EEA immigrants paid in 2% more. Overall, the net fiscal
balance of overall immigration to the UK amounts to a positive contribution
of roughly £25bn between 2001 and 2011.
Immigration also allows for the creation of a much more culturally diverse
society: there are more than 300 languages spoken on a daily basis; during
the 2012 Olympics we cheered as Somalia-born Mo Farah won gold for
Great Britain; chicken tikka masala has overtaken fish and chips as the
nation’s favourite dish.

Yet, despite the benefits, immigration creates challenges, not least for our
public services, which are creaking under the weight of the additional
demand: many schools are unprepared to accommodate children for whom
English is their second language; hospitals are full of foreign patients who
have failed to register with their local GP; and social housing lists grow ever
longer.

In some regards it is not just the increased numbers but the changing nature
of immigration that has created these impacts, said Sunder Katwala, director
of British Future. He highlighted how, whereas migrants used to be keen to
settle in a major city, today they are much more willing to disperse around
the country – meaning places such as Boston in Lincolnshire and Merthyr
Tydfil in Wales are having to cope with higher levels of migration than ever
experienced before. Equally, there is a higher rate of “churn” – immigrants
staying here on a temporary basis - that is also changing the dynamic of the
way they relate to their communities.
Much of the challenge around the immigration debate is that views tend to
be polarised, and are all too often associated with racism

2. EU’s Migration deal in 2018: The agreement foresees the creation of

secure centres to receive migrants.
The EU has been struggling to deal with an inflow of migrants from
across the Mediterranean Sea. Southern European countries, especially
Italy and Malta, have spent heavily on rescuing people at sea and
processing refugees. The job falls to them because of a controversial rule
— the so-called Dublin regulation — which says that asylum
applications should generally be handled by the country of entry.
What was agreed?

 Send rescued migrants on EU territory to “control centres” across the

bloc, and only in countries that volunteered to have them.

 Boosting investment in Africa to help the continent achieve a "socio-

economic transformation" so people no longer want to leave in pursuit
of a better life in Europe.

 Exploring the possibility of "regional disembarkation platforms",

designed to thwart people-smuggling gangs by processing migrants
outside the EU.

The aim to “break the business model of smugglers” by safely

disembarking people rescued at sea in relevant third countries to be
processed to distinguish between irregular migrants and those in need
of international protection.

(Source: The Guardian, BBC)

The new agreement takes several small steps. Leaders said they’d set up
“controlled centers” across the EU to process migrants, but only on
voluntary basis — suggesting that Italy should expect little relief. The
plan also talks of exploring whether centers could be set up outside the
EU, most likely in north and west Africa — but again that calls for
volunteers.
The implication is obvious: Europe needs a single policy on refugees.
The EU should commit more money to securing the external border and
have one centralized system to allocate refugees fairly across countries.
Member states should then be responsible for ensuring that immigrants
integrate into their new societies, for example by providing training and
language courses. Here too an expanded EU budget would be helpful, so
the necessary projects could go forward everywhere, including in poorer
member states.

2 months after EU contries set up an agreement on migrants, the

countries still have to deal with conflicts and difficulties in handling the
migrants. The agreement is somehow just a temporary relief, to all 28
countries of EU. What they have to face up with about refugees still
 remains as strong as before, just like the long-time migration crisis
among EU countries.

The new populist government in Italy – where most migrants land if they
make it across the Mediterranean – was demanding that the rest of the bloc
take “concrete steps” to share its burden (and was prepared to veto any deal
if they did not), and anti-immigration leaders in countries such as Hungary
and the Czech Republic were rejecting even the idea of automatic quotas. In
Germany, which took in more than a million migrants in 2015, Merkel’s
conservative coalition partner had threatened to shut the border to migrants
who had applied for asylum elsewhere in the EU, a move that could trigger
the collapse of her government and mark the end of the EU’s totemic
passport-free Schengen zone. The German chancellor had said migration
could “decide the fate of the EU”.
What was agreed?

Like many EU deals, this was a carefully but vaguely worded fudge to
satisfy divergent views. It stopped well short of decisively solving the
problem, but may have raised enough of a platform to build on. Satisfying
Italy, member states agreed to send rescued migrants on EU territory to
“control centres” across the bloc – at locations still to be decided, and only
in countries that volunteered to have them. There, “rapid and secure
processing” would sift economic migrants from refugees with a potential
right to asylum, “for whom the principle of solidarity would apply”.
Appeasing some of the central Europeans, no relocation measures would be
compulsory. Leaders also backed plans, broadly agreed by all members, to
tighten the EU’s external border, give more money to countries such as
Turkey and Morocco to help prevent migrants leaving for Europe, and set up
processing centres in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco,
Niger and Tunisia. And in an apparent lifeline for Merkel, the accord said
governments should “take all necessary internal legislative and
administrative measures” to stop refugees and migrants crossing Europe’s
internal borders. (Source: The Guardian)

European Union leaders say they have a new deal on migration. It’s
hardly that: They came up with a text but no clear agreement on what to
do. The plan is a muddle that leaves important details blank.
The EU has been struggling to deal with an inflow of migrants from
across the Mediterranean Sea. Southern European countries, especially
Italy and Malta, have spent heavily on rescuing people at sea and
processing refugees. The job falls to them because of a controversial rule
— the so-called Dublin regulation — which says that asylum
applications should generally be handled by the country of entry.
The number of new arrivals has fallen sharply since the peak in October
2015, but dealing with the consequences of earlier migration is still
difficult. Resentment of migrants and of the EU’s part in the problem is,
if anything, still growing. It was decisive in propelling the League, a
right-wing xenophobic party, to its place in Italy’s government. In
Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has come under pressure from the
Christian Social Union, a junior coalition partner, to restrict the
movements of migrants within the EU.
The new agreement takes several small steps. Leaders said they’d set up
“controlled centers” across the EU to process migrants, but only on
 voluntary basis — suggesting that Italy should expect little relief. The
plan also talks of exploring whether centers could be set up outside the
EU, most likely in north and west Africa — but again that calls for
volunteers. Crucially, Europe did nothing to revise the Dublin
agreement; in fact, the leaders agreed that any changes to that accord
would require consensus, giving a veto to hard-line governments such as
Hungary’s.
The implication is obvious: Europe needs a single policy on refugees. The
EU should commit more money to securing the external border and have one
centralized system to allocate refugees fairly across countries. Member
states should then be responsible for ensuring that immigrants integrate into
their new societies, for example by providing training and language courses.
Here too an expanded EU budget would be helpful, so the necessary projects
could go forward everywhere, including in poorer member states.

Migration is a challenge for Europe as a whole and demands a truly

European response. This new agreement isn’t it.

The 28 EU leaders agreed several other measures, including:

 Strengthening external border controls, with more funding for Turkey and
countries in North Africa

 Exploring the possibility of "regional disembarkation platforms",

designed to thwart people-smuggling gangs by processing migrants
outside the EU

 Boosting investment in Africa to help the continent achieve a "socio-

economic transformation" so people no longer want to leave in pursuit of
a better life in Europe

The centres are meant be set up by EU states on a voluntary basis, but there
are no details on which nations might host them or take in refugees.

About 56,000 migrants have arrived in Europe so far this year, the
International Organization for Migration says, compared to more than a
million in 2015.