On August 27, an unsuspecting Austrian Autobahn worker happened upon an abandoned truck on the side of the road. What he found inside sent shockwaves through Europe. Seventy-one men, women, and children, all in search of a brighter future, had suffocated inside the truck; the victims of an exploitative criminal network smuggling desperate refugees into Europe. Stories like this one have come to dominate headlines in recent months, gory evidence of a critical juncture in European history. For years, the European Union (EU) had been able to pay off Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s government to capture and detain migrants that were heading for Europe. All this changed when the Arab Spring that toppled Gadhafi’s regime inadvertently triggered the refugee and migrant crisis we find ourselves in today.
In their determined efforts to reach European shores, refugees pay exorbitantly high fees to board dilapidated, hardly sea-worthy boats bound for Italy or Greece. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights estimates that 2,500 people have died just this summer while attempting to cross the Mediterranean. It isn’t those who have died trying to enter Europe, however, that have brought Europe to a tumult. It is those who have survived, making their way across the continent and towards its wealthy core, that have made the crisis all too real in the hearts and minds of European onlookers.
This is where we arrive at the crux of the problem. In their efforts to discourage refugees from making the perilous journey in the first place, the majority of European countries have actively avoided policies that could lessen the dangers refugees face. Meanwhile, such a strategy makes no attempt to address the underlying reasons that force millions of citizens to leave their homes behind.
The greatest single example of this misguided approach occurred last fall, when the United Kingdom abruptly disavowed its support for Mare Nostrum, a EU-funded search-and-rescue operation by the Italian navy that saved approximately 150,000 people in 2014. The British government rationalized its position by claiming that the rescues only emboldened more refugees to put their lives in harm’s way, a popular argument among immigration hardliners throughout Europe. As Britain’s Foreign Office minister, Baroness Joyce Anelay, explained last year, “We believe that they [the rescue missions] create an unintended ‘pull factor,’ encouraging more migrants to attempt the dangerous sea crossing and thereby leading to more tragic and unnecessary deaths.” Although migration numbers have risen sharply in recent years, it is by no means clear whether that has been a direct result of expanded search-and-rescue operations. In any case, Operation Triton, the European Union’s replacement for Mare Nostrum, is far more limited in scope. This program only provides for patrols within 30 miles of European borders, shifting the focus from search-and-rescue operation to border protection.
Thus, Britain has chosen to swim against the tide of humanitarianism and international law, both of which naturally assume that shipwrecked and drowning refugees should be rescued. However, this shortsighted and negligent strategy did not stop more than 300,000 refugees and migrants from crossing the Mediterranean this year. As a result, various European countries including, ironically, the United Kingdom itself, saw no other solution than to manage the influx through the ad hoc deployment of military and even commercial vessels that came to the rescue of sinking ships throughout the summer, when the number of refugees peaked.
Such initiatives by single European countries to manage the crisis unilaterally are no longer the exception. As the European Union has failed to agree on adequate joint measures, several countries, chief among them Germany, have taken matters into their own hands. For instance, Germany recently announced it would allow Syrian refugees to apply for asylum directly in Germany even when EU agreements prescribed otherwise. While many are quick to praise Germany for its determination to aid refugees, and with good reason, such unilateral actions directly violate EU policies. By breaching European accords and acting on its own, Germany has effectively written a blank check that allows other European nations to do just the opposite and ignore humanitarian responsibility altogether.
The Dublin Convention, for instance, requires refugees to stay in the first European country in which they arrive until their asylum claims are processed. In theory, this is meant to prevent refugees from “asylum shopping” across the EU in hope of eventually reaching a country that will approve their asylum applications. In practice, though, the rule has trapped thousands of refugees in Greece and Italy, often the first point of arrival for those crossing the Mediterranean, utterly overstraining local authorities. Many refugees, however, have no intention of staying in Italy. Unemployment benefits are hard to come by and the country has been mired in recession for six years, with an official unemployment rate of 13 percent and a youth unemployment rate of 43 percent. The situation in Greece is even more grave. For all his glossy rhetoric about Europe being a “beacon of civilization, not a wall of fear” for the huddled masses of migrants, left-wing Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has been quick to turn a blind eye as migrant workers fall victim to widespread labor exploitation by the Italian mafia, including paying wages below minimum standards and the arbitrary reduction, delays or non-payment of wages. Ultimately, lax Italian migration control has given droves of unidentified refugees a green light to seep through Italian borders into the European heartland.
Most other EU states have pushed back against Italy’s “back door policy.” France, for example, has closed its border with Italy on the Côte d’Azur in defiance of the Schengen Agreement, which guarantees free movement within member nations. French security forces have locked down the border, rigorously checking trains, cars, and even trails across the mountains and sending any ‘illegal’ migrants back to Italy. According to reports, nearly 6,000 people have been sent back so far this year. The French accuse Italy of failing to effectively distinguish economic migrants from refugees. Meanwhile, at Brenner Pass in the Alps, Austria has imposed “temporary” border controls along its Italian border as it struggles to cope with thousands of people trying to reach Germany.
Other European nations have been overtly hostile towards refugees. In mid-September, Hungarian authorities violently clashed with refugees trying to cross from Serbia, using tear gas and water cannons to repel them. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has made his position clear in a series of incendiary remarks: “It is not a European problem, it is a German problem. Nobody would like to stay in Hungary, neither Slovakia, Poland nor Estonia,” Mr. Orbán said after talks with European Parliament President Martin Schulz. “All of them would like to go to Germany.”
The world faces the most dire migration crisis since World War II. Over 52 million people have been forced to leave their homes behind because of war, persecution, and oppression, and every day an estimated 42,500 more join them. After witnessing the unspeakable atrocities committed at concentration camps and the waves of European refugees uprooted and endangered by total war, the global community made a simple but strong promise: “never again.” Tragically, at a time when an astonishing number of endangered citizens need help, wealthy countries are hesitant to provide any meaningful assistance. Their reluctance to act has placed millions of refugee families in grave danger.
For too long, Europe has pretended that the migrant crisis does not exist. These nations can remain silent no longer. The primary obstacle preventing a more sustainable response to the incoming masses is not a lack of resources, but rather a lack of solidarity among EU member states in addressing this crisis collectively beyond vowing to fight its symptoms. In another breach of collective responsibility in Europe, there is no clear, coherent policy nor unified response on behalf of the European Union: the European treaty regime is not equipped to regulate such shocks to the system. In fact, it sometimes represents a direct obstacle to a meaningful solution, as in the case of the Dublin Convention. But in the absence of a politically unified strategy, unilateral initiatives on the part of states like Germany and Italy may worsen the problem, as they further undermine European unity.
For this to change, EU member states must work together on multilateral reforms that will redistribute refugee populations to all corners of the continent and lessen the burden on any one nation. Of course, until the global community devises a plan to deal with the ongoing violence at its root causes in Syria, North Africa, and Iraq, among other places, refugees will continue pouring into Europe. In the interim, steps must be taken to mitigate preventable loss of life en route to Europe. Europeans must recognize their moral obligation to ensure that people fleeing from conflict, persecution, misery, and land degradation do not endure such terrible experiences only to wind up dead on Europe’s doorstep.