Europe's response to the migrant crisis could make or break the in-out referendum
Of all the ‘known unknowns’ that could dominate - or even derail - this referendum campaign, Europe’s response to the migrant crisis is the most dangerous by a very long way. The leaders are meeting today in Brussels, along with their Turkish counterparts, to try and cobble together something, anything, that might work. No one is very optimistic.
First to the propoals. A leaked draft of the summit conclusions declares that the Balkan route “is now closed”. Simple, clear, decisive. But of course complete nonsense.
For that route to close, two things would have to happen: the refugees and migrants would have to stop coming; and many of those already on European soil would have to be sent back to Turkey. The first won’t happen. The second just might, but getting agreement with Turkey on large scale repatriations is going to be extremely difficult, and even then may not be legal under EU law.
What they can do is to fortify the northern border of Greece, bottling up the problem in one European country in order to ‘save’ all the others. The drawbacks to this are obvious, particularly if you’re Greek. Turning one member state into a giant refugee camp, with all the humanitarian dangers that would entail, is not serious politics.
And even if that were to succeed, the people smugglers have an alternative: revert to the route through Italy that was the favoured option until about a year ago. The sea crossing is longer, the number of drownings would increase, but they’ll get ashore on European soil, only this time the Turks won’t have been involved. Are they then going to seal off the northern borders of Italy as well? Of course not.
Brussels is fully aware of all this, which is why a major revamp of EU asylum policy cannot be too far away - and this is where real danger lies for the ‘Remain’ camp in the UK. Much as everyone may prefer to have this discussion after, rather than before, the June referendum, things are getting so serious that it’s unlikely anyone is going to wait.
Essentially the existing ‘Dublin rules’ are wholly inadequate for the current crisis. When it was originally decreed that refugees should register and claim asylum in the country in which they first arrive, it was never envisaged that a single country could be hit by more than a million arrivals in a single year.
As spelled out in this morning’s FT (£), there are two alternatives up for discussion. First, that Dublin be scrapped altogether and replaced by a centralised, EU-wide system of processing asylum claims, in which refugees would be shared equitably across the continent. The second is less radical, but would still involve the distribution of successful asylum claims away from any country that was being overwhelmed by a sudden influx.
London would be strongly opposed to any such changes, and retains an opt out that would free it from any obligation to accept refugee quotas, but… There would be a price to pay. Under the Dublin rules, the UK is allowed to send back asylum seekers to the country from which they arrived in Britain. Currently that allows about 1,000 a year to be deported, mostly to France. If Dublin goes, so do the repatriations.
As ever in this crisis, there are no easy answers. Nor, it seems, are there any good answers.
David Cameron will offer more money and more naval power in the Aegean Sea as a way to try and mitigate the crisis, but these are sticking plasters and everyone knows it. And the refugee story is going to dominate the news from the continent right up until that fateful day on June 23rd.