Drownings Put Migration at Fore of European Meeting
|
Version 0 of 1. BRUSSELS — In the aftermath of the drowning deaths of more than 360 migrants in a packed boat off an Italian island this month, the question of how to share the burden of the refugees and asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean Sea is dividing the European Union ahead of a meeting of national leaders starting Thursday. Migration is rapidly becoming the most pressing, and politically divisive, problem for the union as it starts to emerge from the debt crisis among euro-area countries that threatened to sink the single currency. The tensions broke into the open on Wednesday, when it emerged that Southern European nations — including Croatia, Greece, Italy, Malta and Spain — had demanded concrete pledges from the rest of the bloc to help manage the influx of migrants, which continues to cost lives, overwhelm southern countries’ resources and clash with the bloc’s humanitarian ideals. Such pleas are resented by other nations that say they have taken in the largest number of asylum seekers, and may meet resistance from countries like Britain, France and the Netherlands, whose welfare systems are strained and whose leaders are facing pressure to look tough on border control to counter the rise of anti-immigrant parties. Emphasizing that migration is not just a challenge for individual countries, the southern states called on European leaders late Tuesday to increase resources for patrols, to draw up plans for receiving and processing migrants in European Union states farther north, and to develop more cooperation with nations in Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia to stop people from taking to the seas in the first place. The recent deaths underline “the need for a determined European response through a comprehensive response to migration flows,” according to language that the Mediterranean countries are seeking to add to a final summit communiqué to be issued on Friday. The countries are also calling for “a fair sharing of responsibilities” among all members of the bloc to counter migratory pressures generated by unrest and uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. The migration issue threatens to overshadow other items on the agenda for the two-day summit meeting, which Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council, the organizer of summit meetings for the European Union, had called to focus mainly on how to use advances in digital technologies and communications to bolster economic growth. But for once, the economic woes that have preoccupied leaders are not at the top of their agenda, as the call by the Mediterranean countries underscored the urgency of a migration crisis that continues to be punctuated by large-scale losses of life and increasing claims for asylum. Most of the more than 360 migrants who died when their boat sank on Oct. 3 near the island of Lampedusa were Eritreans and Somalis. On Oct. 11, a boat carrying hundreds of Syrians and Palestinians capsized off Sicily, killing more than 30 people. Over the past two decades, 20,000 migrants have died trying to make it across the Mediterranean to Europe. The number of asylum applicants registered in the European Union was 330,000 in 2012, an increase of 30,000 from 2011. Belgium, Britain, France, Germany and Sweden registered 70 percent of those applicants, according to Eurostat, the union’s statistics agency. With the security situation in countries like Syria showing little sign of improvement, high levels of migration could continue in the coming months, when weather conditions are more hazardous, further increasing pressure on the union to better manage the wave of migration and asylum claims. Yet, there was little indication that leaders would agree to any major changes to European migration and asylum policy. Leaders of northern countries like Britain and the Netherlands were expected to emphasize the need to wait for results from a European Commission task force. A draft copy of a final communiqué circulated by diplomats on Wednesday afternoon expressed “deep sadness” at the recent drownings and suggested more cooperation with international agencies. The draft said that the task force would “present concrete proposals for the short and medium term” at a summit meeting scheduled for Dec. 5-6, and it asked leaders to take up the issue again at another summit meeting in June 2014 to be dedicated to asylum and migration. Left-leaning political leaders and human rights groups called for more to be done. “It is a disgrace that the European Council intends to do no more than express its ‘deep sadness’ following the Lampedusa tragedy,” said Hannes Swoboda, an Austrian member of the European Parliament who leads the body’s powerful Socialist bloc. Monitoring groups also stepped up pressure for action ahead of the summit meeting, warning that the European Union, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012, was failing to live up to its often soaring talk on human rights. “E.U. leaders should move beyond expressions of regret and commit to concrete actions to help prevent more deaths of migrants at sea,” Judith Sunderland, the acting deputy director for Western Europe at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “New proposals for increased monitoring of the Mediterranean need to focus on saving lives, not barring entry to the E.U.” Other leaders, including José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, emphasized the need for caution in dealing with a complex issue that involves so many countries and causes. “We must all do more to prevent tragedies like this,” Mr. Barroso said in a statement, but “there are no magic or immediate solutions, and we need to be realistic.” As for the other items on the summit agenda, President François Hollande of France was expected to be among the leaders using the occasion to call on others to endorse tough new data privacy regulations in the wake of revelations about the United States’ spying on the e-mails and Internet searches of Europeans. But any such call by Mr. Hollande and other leaders is likely to be somewhat lukewarm, partly because many governments do not support elements of the version of the law agreed upon by a panel of lawmakers in the European Parliament on Monday. The lawmakers want the data protection legislation to be agreed on before spring, partly to burnish their chances of success in Parliament elections in May. But the draft conclusions prepared ahead of the summit meeting call only for agreement sometime in 2014, making the spring deadline look ambitious. |