Europe’s divisions over migration likely to be exposed as leaders meet

ANDREAS SOLARO | AFP | Getty Images

Migrants and refugees are transferred from the Topaz Responder ship run by Maltese NGO ‘Moas’ and the Italian Red Cross to the Spanish war ship Navarra, after being rescued off the coast of Libya on November 5, 2016.

How Europe should prevent migrants attempting the dangerous sea passage to reach its shores, how it should fairly “redistribute” migrants throughout the continent once they’ve arrived and whether to end the “Dublin III Regulation” — which means the first country of entry is responsible for their asylum claims — are also expected to be discussed.

That the summit is taking place several years after the peak of the crisis underlines that the region has been unable to deal with the issue properly, although the nature of the migration flows have changed somewhat. In 2015, over a million migrants entered the bloc, with many fleeing civil war in Syria and travelling up through Europe, via Greece and en route to Germany. Now, migration flows are concentrated on southwestern Europe with Spain and Italy seeing more migrant flows from African nations.

Although data from the United Nation’s International Organization for Migration (IOM) show that arrivals in the EU are on the decline, the numbers are still significant.

Current figures from the IOM show that the EU has seen 42,845 arrivals by sea so far in 2018 (there were 172,152 in 2017) with 972 people dead or missing. Italy has seen over 16,000 arrivals while Greece has seen 12, 942 — below the 13,462 that have arrived in Spain.

Thousands of people have died making the dangerous sea crossing in the last few years, although the subject of sea rescues is itself increasingly contentious. Italy’s new populist, anti-establishment government has started to refuse to allow migrant rescue ships operated by charities to dock at any of its ports, leaving vulnerable migrants stranded.