Immigration was a key issue in the Brexit vote and has become a recurring theme in the bloc's election campaigns.
Immigration was a key issue in the Brexit vote and has become a recurring theme in the bloc's election campaigns.
Marcela Vélez-Plickert
If anyone had any doubts about how the migration wave of 2015 would change the European Union, now they only have to look at the delay in Germany being able to form a government. It had never cost so much to form a coalition, much less under the unappealing leadership of Angela Merkel. But her own decision to open the borders in September 2015 to a million migrants, many of them undocumented, has caused a series of political changes that are transforming Europe. One of them is the rise of the nationalist right in the German Bundestag, and with it the shift in the political balance between the center and the left in this country. In fact, it's not taxes or economic reforms (which are actually minor) that have prevented the Germans from having a new government four months after the elections. La verdadera piedra de tope es la política migratoria.
The problem is no longer the humanitarian emergency of hundreds of thousands of refugees stuck in rudimentary camps on the borders of the bloc, or dozens of boats sinking every week in the Mediterranean Sea with hundreds of migrants on board. According to figures from the European Commission, the number of asylum seekers (for the first time) in any of the 28 countries of the bloc fell from 1.3 million in 2015 and 2016 to 687,045 in the third quarter of last year. The main groups of applicants come from Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq, with a strong increase in applicants from Nigeria and other African countries. On the other hand, the number of migrants and asylum seekers from countries such as Albania and Kosovo has fallen.
The humanitarian emergency has instead been displaced to other geographical points, for example in Libya, where images from an NGO revealed the functioning of a slave market and massive abuse of migrants.
"The flow of irregular migrants has fallen by 63%... but migration is our new reality", said Dimitris Avramopoulos, European Commissioner for Migration, who is also leading the negotiations for a reform of the EU's joint migration policy scheduled for June.
Divisions in the area
Avaramopoulos is not wrong. Migration, which he describes as an "emotional, sensitive and political issue", keeps the EU paralyzed, not to mention deeply divided. At the level of the bloc, the rift between it and the West seems difficult to heal. The EU, upset by Poland's refusal to accept its quota of refugees, has even decided to intervene in that country's domestic politics, threatening the government with sanctions for a reform of the judicial system, accusing it of a breach of the law.
Sanctions or not, neither the Polish government nor its neighbors in Hungary, Slovakia and Bulgaria are willing to open their borders, especially to non-Christian migrants with different cultural values. These same countries accuse Germany, France and other central European states of having a vision of the continent that they don't share and that they also have a right to be listened to regarding the definition of the bloc's stance on the refugee wave.
"Democracy recovered when the Austrians, who don't want any more immigration, elected a government that is also opposed. This will also happen in other parts of Europe. It's only a matter of time", said last week Víctor Orban, the conservative Hungarian Prime Minister, who has defied Brussels. Everything points to the fact that Orban, with his anti-immigration policy as his electoral banner, will be re-elected another four years in April.
As in Austria last October, migration is a key issue in the electoral campaign in Italy, which will go to the polls in March. This country is the one that receives the greatest weight in the control of illegal migration, with 60% of illegal migrants arriving on its shores each year, according to figures from Frontex.
The rejection of his economic management and the handling of immigration have sunk the Democratic Party, of the former prime minister, Mateo Renzi, to 4% in the polls, surpassed by six points by the reactionary and nationalist 5 Star Movement. At the top of the polls is the coalition led by Silvio Berlusconi, capable of winning a majority to form a government, as long as the alliance with the increasingly powerful Northern League (now just the League), which also has a nationalist profile, is maintained.
In Germany, Merkel saw a first attempt to form a government fail after several weeks of negotiations, in which Christian Democrats, Liberals and Greens finally failed to reach agreement on the migration issue in particular.
What to do with the hundreds of thousands of migrants who resist integrating? What to do with the new population that doesn't share values such as women's freedom? How to finance the growing cost of migrant reception and integration services, which last year reached 14,000 million euros? Moreover, what about the demand from refugees to bring their families to the country?
The answers to all these questions are especially delicate in a nation that is still paying for the guilt of Nazism. Where the growing frustration of the citizens is palpable is in what they consider a threat to their security. Although the press strives not to establish links, especially in the last week, reports of crimes committed by refugees, whether against women or for religious reasons, have multiplied. In almost all cases, the perpetrators reside in the country, despite the fact that they have been denied asylum for months.
But after long weeks of agony, Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, the Bavarian Conservatives and the Social Democrats have reached a preliminary agreement to form a new grand coalition to govern Germany for another four years. To achieve this, Merkel has had to completely overturn her initial stance on migration and accept the demand of her more conservative coalition partners that a limit of 200,000 migrants per year be put in place, including family members of refugees, who must also meet more requirements to obtain the benefit. There is still a long way to go (until April, probably) before the coalition is confirmed and negotiations could fall through at any point.
A new failure could be a mortal blow to Merkel's ambition to add another four years in power. This, in turn, could further complicate the EU's upcoming negotiations to reform its migration policy. However, until Germany and Italy resolve the formation of their next governments, the EU will probably only do what it usually does during crises: delay its solution.
Source: Pulse – 24/01/2018