“Freedom of movement for workers shall be secured within the Union,” says the Treaty of Lisbon. This is a core pillar of the EU’s single market and a less controversial issue outside of the Brexit debate, where even former prime minister and liberal Remainer Tony Blair has questioned the fairness of letting EU citizens hunt for jobs in the UK without any “emergency brakes” that go beyond the current qualifications.

The details of freedom of movement change from time to time: in April 2018, for example, French president Emmanuel Macron led a push on the EU level to reduce the amount of time that “posted workers” can work in a member-state without abiding by the (usually more stringent) local labor or pension standards. There are also restrictions on when EU migrants can claim welfare benefits. But the principle of allowing EU foreigners in to work is generally accepted, even if some people consider it a necessary evil of the single market. While Europeans do, in the aftermath of the refugee crisis, tend to want fewer immigrants in general and those already here to integrate better, only 29 percent of respondents in the Spring 2018 Eurobarometer poll said they had a “negative feeling” about intra-EU migration.

So much for receiving countries. The debate is somewhat different in the member states whose citizens are trying their luck abroad. That’s because of one buzzword: “brain drain,” or the emigration of skilled or qualified people.

According to the latest figures from Eurostat, in 2017 six EU member states had more than 10 percent of their working-age population working elsewhere in the EU. Romania (19.7 percent), Lithuania (15 percent), Croatia (14 percent), Portugal (13.9 percent), Latvia (12.9 percent), Bulgaria (12.5 percent)—these are mostly eastern member states and less well off than the EU average. While the stereotypes may be of Polish cleaners seeking higher wages abroad, mobile workers in the EU are more likely to have tertiary education than the resident population.

Other statistics help paint the picture of what is happening in central and eastern Europe, where emigration is high, birth rates are low, and pensions are a huge burden on the social welfare state. The Economist points out that tiny Latvia’s working-age population has fallen by a quarter since 2000. Bulgaria’s population, nearly nine million in 1989, had shrunk to 7.1 million by 2017, creating a massive shortage of qualified labor in the country.

Better Than Walls

The “brain drain” issue is seeping into the politics of these sending countries. At a Visegrád summit in 2016, Polish President Andrzej Duda said, “We must stop the wave of emigration … that makes so many talented, creative young people leave our countries.” Poland, like several of its neighbors, has a program to encourage citizens to return and help them with jobs and housing.

One reason that Viktor Orbán’s Hungarian government recently passed a controversial law giving businesses the right to force employees to work up to 400 hours of overtime per year was that nine percent of the working-age population is abroad, and that Orbán has no interest in allowing non-EU migrants to take their places. Audi workers in Hungary successfully demanded an 18 percent raise in February, showing how much bargaining power they have amid a labor shortage. Meanwhile, the Romanian finance minister Eugen Teodorovici has even called for the introduction of a non-renewable, five-year permit for Romanian citizens to work in another EU country.

But there are also real benefits of skilled labor mobility from the perspecive of a sending country. Portugal, for example, was grateful during this decade’s financial crisis that some unemployed Portuguese could try their luck in the stronger economies of Europe’s north until things improved at home. Mobile EU workers may send remittances home, or return later to start businesses, or make personal and business connections that strengthen the bonds between their home country and its European neighbors. For the workers themselves, freedom of movement is a beautiful thing—indeed, minister Teodorovici was quickly forced to walk back what he called an “ill-formulated proposal.”

The fact that a Romanian nurse or Greek data engineer can move to France in search of better wages is literally the point of a free market in a free, integrated Europe, as is the ability of workers in countries prized for their cheap labor to demand better compensation. Economists tell us that labor mobility is a prerequisite for an optimal currency area, as it helps prices and wages adjust in member states bound by the euro. Difficult as things are in the Polish towns whose young and educated have left, today’s situation is vastly preferable to using walls and visa requirements to stop Europeans from living where they want.

Perhaps it’s illustrative to think of EU brain drain in the context of worldwide migration trends. All across the world, people are moving from poorer, rural areas to the metropolises where most wealth is created. Many of the brightest and most ambitious will never return, increasing the inequality between winners and losers and straining social services. This is a challenge not only across borders but also within countries. There are towns in northern England and eastern Germany whose young graduates flock to London and Berlin. However, that mobility only shows up in national-level statistics—and no national governments are proposing restrictions on it.

The correct response, then, is not to restrict freedom of movement within a member state or within the EU, but to continue the redistributive and investment policies that aim to make underdeveloped regions more attractive, whether we’re talking about a small town in Saxony or the capital of Bulgaria.

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Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

When Europe’s heads of government staggered bleary-eyed out of a Council meeting on the morning of June 29th, it looked as if they had broken the migration policy deadlock. Angela Merkel had the result she needed to keep her government together and calm her sister party, the Bavarian CSU. The new Italian prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, was also pleased– he had gotten promises of support from the rest of Europe with the migrants landing on his country’s Mediterranean coastline, and Italy was now “no longer alone.” With the ostensible breakthrough emerged a new term: “regional disembarkation platforms.” But what exactly was Brussels’ new baby?

The objective of these platforms, later called regional disembarkation “arrangements,” is to “provide quick and safe disembarkation on both sides of the Mediterranean of rescued people in line with international law, including the principle of non-refoulement, and a responsible post-disembarkation process.” According to various official EU documents, key elements of the concept are: having “clear rules for all,” support from the UN Refugee Agency, “partnerships on equal footing,” “no pull factors,” and “no detention, no camps.”

Emphatically Not Camps

Got it? OK, there’s more detail to come. But it’s notable that the EU fact sheet does not contain a sentence that plainly states what the disembarkation platforms are. No subject and predicate linked by a copula, not even an “appear” or “will become.” But remember, they are emphatically not camps.

This, though, is not just an example of obfuscatory bureaucrat speak, of which the EU is a master in English, run as it is by highly educated officials who often speak excellent English as a second or third or fourth language, peppering their statements with words like “informations” and “feedbacks” that are foreign to a native. The problem is that it’s very difficult to be clear about a concept that must be all things to all people.

Some parts about disembarkation platforms are somewhat clear. The core idea is to set up safe centers for processing asylum claims outside of EU borders, probably in safe countries in North Africa. This would “eliminate the incentive to embark on perilous journeys” across the sea in order to have the right to file an asylum claim. It would also help stop people smugglers, a noble goal. If a migrant at sea is rescued by a third-country vessel or by an EU vessel in international waters, he or she could be brought to one of the platforms. Those people not entitled to international protection should “be returned,” while those in need of protection could be resettled, though not all of them would get to go to Europe. In order to entice African countries to sign up, the EU will offer money, training, administrative support, and legal resettlement places.   

Kurz’ Idea

This is not a new concept. European leaders have long floated similar plans. At the restrictive end of the spectrum, Sebastian Kurz of Austria has pushed for “safe zones” in refugees’ countries of origin, which the EU would support “militarily.” Indeed, the 2016 EU agreement with Turkey is based on the principle of a third country processing migrants and preventing so-called irregular migration in exchange for EU aid and concessions. All such ideas are part of the EU’s push to externalize the migration problem by getting other countries to take more responsibility for people crossing their borders, which also defuses the issue politically and minimizes the EU’s legal responsibility by reducing contact with migrants.

Europe’s partners, though, quickly made clear how difficult it would be to implement “disembarkation platforms.” The UN Refugee Agency reportedly wrote a confidential letter insisting that any centers in third countries be “safe and dignified,” a tall order in, for example, key transit country Libya given the deplorable conditions and slave markets there. African heads of state responded by agreeing to reject Europe’s “easy, counterproductive solution,” as Morocco described it. According to recent reports, there is still no African country prepared to operate a platform.  No government is eager to be fully responsible for the centers, or risk having rejected asylum-seekers disappear into its territory.

Migration experts agreed that the idea was fanciful. Catherine Woollard of the European Council on Refugees and Exiles accused the EU of living in “externalization fantasyland,” of relying on countries taking back their citizens when they are unwilling or unable to do so. To a developing country, remittances from citizens working in Europe are often more valuable than extra foreign aid; and sometimes these countries are wary of reaccepting emigrants for whom they couldn’t provide jobs or services in the first place.

Too Few Legal Ways

Europe also offers too few legal resettlement places to really discourage illegal migration, as Elizabeth Collett and Susan Fratzke of the Migration Policy Institute point out. In March 2018, the UN had to temporarily suspend a program whereby refugees were flown from Libya to Niger for processing because the EU had only resettled a fraction of the already small number promised. The EU’s first scheme to force member states to take in refugees from Italy and Greece already collapsed when the Visegrad countries revolted. And cooperation has hardly improved since the June summit: in August, the Italian government refused for six days to allow a boat of Eritrean migrants to disembark in Sicily until Ireland finally agreed to take some in.

It’s easy to snipe from the sidelines. Illegal migration to Europe is an intractable problem that is only likely to get bigger, at least from the perspective of Europe’s politicians. And the announcement from Brussels that the EU had agreed on a migration solution was certainly a boon to Merkel and Conte. Just don’t expect “disembarkation platforms” to be the breakthrough for European migration policy, or the next new name for refugee centers to be much more than window dressing. Unless North Africa has a change of heart, the only relevant platforms will be the piers where people get off boats.

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© REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

Watching EU leaders shuffle uncertainly around the Mirabell gardens in Salzburg, cameras clicking and whirring from the sidelines, I thought of when the pretty park—and indeed most of the city—attracted attention in 1964. The cast and crew took up residence to film “The Sound of Music,” a Hollywood musical about a singing family, a sinister duchess, and a young post boy who—spoiler alert—joins the Hitler Youth.

If they ever make a musical out of Brexit, it’s unlikely that, in the words of one Sound of Music tune, Salzburg will count among EU leaders’ favorite things.

With Brexit looming large, leaders’ hopes were again raised by the British spin machine that London might have something to move talks beyond the departure lounge. But hopes of entering a new space, to discuss a future relationship between Britain and the European Union, were once again dashed.

British Prime Minister Theresa May had everyone’s attention at dinner on Wednesday evening. With half a year to go until a disorderly departure from the EU, would May move? And would the EU shift in return, as senior officials had signaled before the meeting? No and no.

In the words of one dinner attendee, May “effectively read out an op-ed” she had written for that morning’s Die Welt newspaper. “To come to a successful conclusion, just as the UK has evolved its position, the EU will need to do the same,” she wrote, and said.

Everyone besides Britain views the UK’s position as wanting to have its cake and eat it. But they are waiting for London to put forward proposals that would make such cake-eating politically or legally possible for the EU27. Thus, the response of Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, to May’s after-dinner address was short and blunt: “It won’t work.”

Squaring the Circle

Talks on what happens after March 29 next year are stalled because London has yet to square the circle on the border that divides the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. In six months’ time this will be an outer EU border and all such borders—particularly those which are also a customs border, as Britain wants—require checks and infrastructure.

This is unacceptable to Dublin and many in Northern Ireland who thought borders belonged in the bad old days of the province. The old border infrastructure from the Troubles was dismantled, never to return, after the 1998 peace agreement. Last December Britain agreed that Brexit must reflect and respect this when the UK departs the EU and the customs union.

Brussels put forward its proposal for turning this political aspiration into legal reality: minimize controls on the island of Ireland by keeping the province inside the EU customs union. Any checks on people or goods entering and leaving could then take place between Ireland and Great Britain, with a new border effectively in the Irish Sea.

But London views this as unacceptable: it would create different legal regimes within the UK—and Belfast politicians loyal to the crown fear this would separate them from the mainland. Their reservations carry weight because May depends on their parliamentary support in Westminster.

But if the EU’s legal proposal is unacceptable, what is the UK’s alternative? Salzburg could have been the moment when the prime minister presented even an outline. But she didn’t.

For the Irish, Brexit is not a technicality but, in the words of foreign minister Simon Coveney this week, a “lose-lose-lose situation.” The best Dublin hopes for on Brexit is a damage-limitation deal. Open borders in Ireland will keep people and trade moving. But Irish trucks having to exit and re-enter the EU on their way to mainland Europe could be disastrous—in particular for fresh food exporters.

For Dublin, the so-called Brexit backstop—no border on the island of Ireland—is as non-negotiable in Brexit talks as the 1998 peace agreement, the result of years of complicated talks backed by Dublin, London, but also Brussels. Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar said that all EU leaders he had spoken to gave him their “absolute support in standing behind Ireland,”and that the only acceptable EU agreement on Brexit was one that worked for Ireland. “I am leaving here very reassured,” he said.

With the clock running down to “finalize and formalize” a still non-existent Brexit deal, EU leaders will come together again next month for a moment of truth meeting—and possibly for an emergency meeting in November, in case more truth is needed.

All or Nothing

Will the EU27 hold together in the weeks ahead? Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán suggested in Salzburg that a group of EU leaders were seeking to “punish” the UK.  But in their closed-door talks, EU officials said, Orbán had nothing to say, not even when officials from Poland, a close ally of the Hungarian leader, proposed greater flexibility in the mandate for EU Brexit negotiators.

After a “frank bilateral” with Tusk, the British prime minister left Salzburg. The remaining EU27 leaders stayed to discuss the political declaration on their future relationship with the UK. That is supposed to accompany the legally binding Withdrawal Agreement but is also suspended in limbo.

Again, leaders reiterated that existing British proposals could not provide the basis of such a relationship. May has proposed a free trade agreement between her country and the EU, but wants to exclude services. EU leaders, with thinning patience, insist the internal market is not a cherry-picking farm: it’s all or nothing.

For what felt like the 1000^th time since the 2016 Brexit vote, Chancellor Angela Merkel said: “We were all unified today that there can be no compromises on the internal market.” French president Emmanuel Macron describes such thinking as “unacceptable” and called on his EU colleagues to increase pressure on London in the coming weeks. Echoing growing voices in Britain, Maltese leader Joseph Muscat called for a second referendum in the UK—but other EU leaders declined to follow suit.

The EU circus left Salzburg with leaders calling for compromise with London. Even the Irish—who have the most to lose—said they were open to creative thinking on “language and detail” of any agreement. But this is difficult, they say, given the British have presented nothing to work on.

“De-Dramatizing”

The lack of progress on Brexit couldn’t hide a significant shift on the EU’s other major headache: a long-term political answer to the emotive migration question.

Tusk said there was a “sharp determination” to expand the EU’s border and coast guard Frontex. He said most EU leaders want to press on with plans to create a standing corps of 10,000 border guards—amid some concerns over national sovereignty.

After the pre-summer drama on migration, pushed by German domestic politics, EU leaders transferred their hopes of “de-dramatizing” Brexit onto the refugee question.

Since 2015, EU member states have been divided on whether they should be obliged to share the continent’s refugee burden. In a bid to end the deadlock, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker proposed a new push for “flexibility solidarity.” Describing it as “a proposal I don’t even like myself,” he suggested countries that refuse to accept asylum seekers, such as those in central Europe, should be obliged to contribute on other—chiefly financial—fronts.

President Macron warned in his post-summit press conference that countries that refuse to contribute more to Schengen or other solidarity measures will be edged out of the common travel area. “Countries that don’t want more Europe will no longer touch structural funds,” he said.

Meanwhile EU leaders have pressed on with plans to push offshore the refugee issue, returning people rescued at sea to Egypt and other non-EU countries.

With the migration issue flaring up again in Germany before state elections in the fall, Chancellor Merkel is happy not to push for big changes at the EU level. Above all the German leader knows that, after leading the moral charge on refugees three years ago, such a migration compromise now is less music to her ears than the sound of a political climb-down.

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© REUTERS/ TT News Agency

Swedes woke up to an uncertain political situation on Monday, with no declared winners after a nail-biting election that brought the center-left and center-right political blocs to a deadlock, with neither able to form a majority government. Meanwhile, the far-right, anti-immigration Sweden Democrats declared themselves the “true winners” and kingmakers.

While the Sweden Democrats had hoped to become the second biggest or even the biggest party, they ended up well short of the 25 percent some polls had predicted. Still, there were jubilations among members when preliminary results showed them cementing their position as Sweden’s third party, advancing from just under 13 percent to just under 18 percent. They are clearly a rising force in Swedish politics.

With 28.4 percent of the vote, the Social Democrats fared better than some polls had predicted, though they still performed worse than they have done in over a century. And their coalition partner, the Greens, came dangerously close to falling below the four percent needed to enter parliament. However, Social Democrat leader and (potentially outgoing) prime minister Stefan Löfven refused to heed calls from the opposition to step down on election night.

All in all, just a tenth of a percent now separates the center-left and center-right blocs. While the center-left (the two government parties plus the Left Party) now has one parliamentary seat more than the center-right, the result may shift again on Wednesday after all the early votes and votes cast abroad have been counted and a final result is declared.

Immigration as a Key Issue?

As in other recent elections across Europe – from Italy to Germany – immigration was a key issue in Sweden, with opinion polls in the months running up to the vote showing it to be among the top three concerns for voters, along with healthcare and education. However, on the day of the vote Swedes’ priorities appear to have changed, as immigration dropped to eighth place according to exit polls. The Sweden Democrats, who according to the preliminary results gained 17.6 percent of the vote, were apparently able to capitalize on discontent around mass immigration: in 2015 alone, over 160,000 asylum seekers arrived in Sweden. The Scandinavian nation, with a population of 10 million, took in most migrants per capita of any European country. And in total numbers, only Germany took in more.

During the election campaign, immigration and integration dominated the political debate, and the Sweden Democrats linked those issues to everything ranging from healthcare and schools to crime and the welfare state. The party proposes that Sweden should, at least temporarily, halt the admission of quota refugees and stop granting asylum permits. They also want to offer incentives for repatriation and to limit immigrants’ access to welfare. They say that instead of taking more refugees in, Sweden should instead help those fleeing their home countries by offering assistance in or near the war-torn areas, for instance in the form of aid to organizations operating in refugee camps.

While other parties, too, campaigned on stricter immigration policies, many Swedes apparently felt the Sweden Democrats were more credible in this area. Efforts to win back voters by approaching or adopting the politics of populist parties like the Sweden Democrats are bound to fail, according to Thomas Sommerer, an associate professor in political science at Stockholm University. “When it comes to holding on to voters, tightening one’s migration policy is not a strategy that has worked for the Social Democrats nor for the main opposition party, the Moderates – no matter how hard they tried before the election,” he said.

Neo-Nazi Roots

The Sweden Democrat Party has been around for 30 years now. Among the party’s early founders and members were individuals who had previously been involved with neo-Nazi and racist groups. And as the election drew closer, Swedish media continued to expose current representatives for sharing racist content online, such as anti-Semitic memes and conspiracy theories.

The party’s history prevents the other seven parliamentary parties from considering them as a coalition partner—they made that clear before the election. However, with the center-left and center-right blocs winning around 40 percent of the vote each, Sweden will now need another minority government.

However, being ostracized will not keep the Sweden Democrats from wielding significant influence. Arguably, they also shaped the political debate and set the tone for the entire election, making migration more salient than it otherwise would be. Prime Minister Löfven has called them “a neo-Fascist single-issue party which respects neither people’s differences nor Sweden’s democratic institutions.”

The fact that the Sweden Democrats have the support of 17.6 percent of the Swedes is a sign of the divide between the political class and the wider population, many of whom have abandoned old parties. By casting their vote for the Sweden Democrats, these people expressed that they do want their policies to shape Swedish society.

For the Social Democrats, who have dominated Swedish politics since the 1930s and formed a coalition with the Green Party in 2014, the 2018 general election represents the greatest loss in a century. This downward trend is not unique to the Swedish Social Democrats of course, but has also afflicted their sister parties across the West, as Sommerer pointed out.

”In Sweden, as in Germany, the major political players on the left and right have moved to the political center over the past couple of decades and so, in reality, voters in both countries have been left with few genuine political alternatives,” Sommerer said. “Those who do not appreciate the general shift towards the center—and in Sweden both the Social Democrats and the main opposition, the conservative Moderate Party, have made this shift—now tend to go for smaller parties with clearer ideologies.”

Indeed, smaller parties have gained from this trend, and a record 41 percent of Swedes switched party allegiances in this election, according to exit polls on Sunday. Sweden’s Left Party rose from 5.7 percent in the 2014 election to 7.9 percent in this year’s vote. Other small parties experienced a boost in the final stages of the campaign. The Christian Democrats, for instance, long looked unlikely to make the four-percent electoral threshold but in the end got 6.4 percent of the vote.

Making Inroads

The Sweden Democrats also made significant inroads in traditional Social Democrat strongholds like the northernmost regions of Sweden and in some former industrial towns. A poll in June showed that a quarter of Swedish Trade Union Confederation members planned to vote for the Sweden Democrats. “As the previously dominating parties shrink—in Germany, Sweden and elsewhere—political majorities are becoming a thing of the past,” said Sommerer. “So one is left with two alternatives. One is to form broader coalitions with a larger number of parties—but that also becomes complicated when some alliances are being ruled out in advance. In Sweden, collaboration with the Sweden Democrats was ruled out by the other parties; in Germany the parallel taboo is to collaborate with the Alternative für Deutschland.”

“The other alternative is to collaborate across the political blocs and one change we’re seeing in Germany is that the Green Party is abandoning its old stance of working exclusively with leftist parties. There, the pragmatic sections of the party have become more dominant in recent years and have started collaborating with conservatives. It remains to be seen if the Swedish Greens will follow that lead. I wouldn’t be surprised if some parties are forced to become more flexible here,” said Sommerer.

The day after the election, the bargaining over political power has begun and looks set to continue for some time. The Social Democrats’ group leader Anders Ygeman told Swedish media on Monday that it “could take months” before Sweden has a new government.

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© REUTERS/Michaela Rehle

On Wednesday, Bavaria opened the doors on seven “anchor centers.” The German word Anker is an acronym that leaves little doubt as to the centers’ purpose: arrival, decision, and return. The CSU hopes similar facilities will open elsewhere in Germany, but other federal states are skeptical and have yet to sign up. Opening one of seven such anchor centers, Bavarian state premier Markus Söder talked about using a “carrot and stick” approach to migration, providing arrivals with a decision within 18 months on whether they can stay or must go.

Aware of growing public skepticism and security concerns over migration, Bavarian officials say these centers will expedite asylum applications of people who have little chance of remaining, or those whom officials deem a threat. Asylum seekers with a good chance of securing residency, meanwhile, will be offered a chance to find work or enroll in training schemes or integration programs.

Integration Barriers?

But critics are asking how much integration is possible for people living in an out-of-town barracks behind mesh fences. The migration NGO Pro Asyl has called the anchor centers an “obstacle to integration by government decree,” with a “catastrophic effect” on those housed there. Meanwhile another NGO, Save the Children, attacked the fenced-in centers as a potential risk to the safety and development of their youngest residents.

“The same rights apply to a refugee child as any other children, such as access to education, healthcare and … protection,” said Susanne Krüger, head of the organization in Germany. The centers are controversial in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government in Berlin, too. Johannes-Wilhelm Rörig, a government commissioner responsible for children’s rights, said he was concerned these were not guaranteed in the anchor centers. He has publicly questioned whether the Bavarian anchor centers in their current form conform with Germany’s commitments to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The Bavarians have knocked back all the critics, with CSU leader Horst Seehofer (also federal interior minister in Berlin) saying he was certain the anchor centers will be a “big success.” The opening of the centers comes ahead of a crucial state election in Bavaria in October. After decades in power, the CSU finds itself well short of enough support to retain its absolute majority in the state parliament. It hopes the new facilities have been launched in time to show wavering voters that the CSU is taking a tough law-and-order approach to migration, three years after more than one million people arrived in the country, largely through Bavaria.

On Wednesday, Bavaria’s state interior minister Joachim Hermann pointed out that the camps were all housed in pre-existing asylum centers. What’s new is that, instead of being distributed to municipalities, up to 1,500 residents will live in each center full-time, alongside asylum and other related agencies that process applications.

The camps are not closed and residents will be allowed come and go, he noted, while children will receive education inside the camps rather than at local schools. But Hermann made no bones about the purpose of the facilities: authorities had been instructed to take “visibly swift action,” he said, against migrants who break the law. Later this week, Bavaria will increase financial incentives for voluntary repatriation of migrants as well.

The new measures complement federal interior minister Horst Seehofer’s migration “master plan,” a 63-point paper presented last month to optimize and standardize asylum procedures. Seehofer had threatened to resign in Berlin and collapse the government unless his blueprint was adopted. In the end he struck a compromise with Chancellor Angela Merkel to deport migrants who have already filed for asylum elsewhere in the EU—if the other country agrees. Now he is engaged in talks with neighboring Austria and Italy to make the deal come about.

New Rules for Refugees

Wednesday was not just the launch of Bavaria’s new anchor centers, it also coincided with the start of new family reunification quotas, allowing up to 1,000 relatives of refugees with subsidiary (limited) protection to come to Germany each month. Those with subsidiary protection–people, often Syrians, who are not personally persecuted but nevertheless face a threat of serious harm in their home country—had not been able to bring relatives over since August 2015. Now a fraction of them will be able to.

Still, the opposition parties criticize a law they say makes international refugee law subject to arbitrary upper limits. But to keep her alliance together in Berlin, Chancellor Merkel has allowed her Bavarian allies considerable autonomy on the emotive asylum issue ahead of October’s election. Her other coalition partner, the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) are unimpressed by the new centers—not because they go too far, but because they are what interior spokesman Burkhard Lischka called a “bluff” with little practical change. “Just swapping out a few signs is silly,” he said.

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© REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

Drinks and relief were flowing freely last Thursday evening in a beer garden in central Berlin, just across the river from the chancellery. Many of those enjoying a cool beer were German parliamentarians and their staff.

They had sneaked out of the Bundestag while waiting for the last vote on the federal budget—one of the final hurdles between them and their summer holidays. It was a welcome return to business, given that many feared their holiday plans might be in serious jeopardy.

A dramatic dispute over migration among Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU center-right conservative bloc had pushed the chancellor’s fourth-term grand coalition to the brink of collapse. In the end they deferred the row and narrowly dodged a snap election, meaning the summer holidays were back on. But many of the politicians and journalists departing Berlin for the Baltic coast, Bavaria, or further afield are doing so with a sense of dissatisfaction. Even by sedate Berlin standards, the new government is less twinkle- than treacle-toed.

It’s been a year since Germany’s federal election campaign began. Voters punished the CDU/CSU and their coalition partners, the center-left Social Democrats, at the polls, leaving the chancellor scrambling to form a government. After her first attempt to build a coalition with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP) and the Greens fell apart, President Frank-Walter Steinmeier told the traumatized SPD to pull themselves together and go back into government. With huge reservations, and six months after election day, they did. Yet now, with barely 100 days in office, the current government has been all but paralyzed by the migration row.

And so President Steinmeier again warned the departing government ministers: stop the political games and get back to work, sooner rather than later. “People expect answers,” he told public broadcaster ZDF in a summer interview. “They want their daily problems to be solved.”

The Real Debate

He’s not the only one impatient at the pace—and priorities—in Berlin. A survey for public broadcaster ARD last week showed that migration, despite all the attention and emotion surrounding the topic, is not among Germans’ most pressing issues. Some 79 percent of those polled say they are concerned there aren’t enough nursing care staff to tend to Germany’s fast-aging population. Some 73 percent want more energy invested in education and schools. And 70 percent are concerned about a failure to address the lack of affordable accommodation in urban areas.

Tweeting those numbers last week, SPD general secretary Lars Klingbeil added: “And now let’s talk about a few other issues in the country, eh?”

These problems are not new. (The demographic time bomb in particular has been coming at us for years. Today, one in five Germans is over 65). But after their worst results last year since 1949, Berlin’s governing coalition parties know their survival next time out depends on delivering palpable improvement on these burning social issues.

With around 36,000 jobs unfilled in the nursing care field, many elderly homes around Germany have imposed a moratorium on new residents. To reverse that trend, a new €570 million plan is offering tax-free bonuses of up to €5,000 for care workers who return to the job—and €3,000 for new recruits.

Despite the huge demand for their services, the rules of supply and demand do not seem to have any effect on their pay. Studies show German care workers (mostly women) are poorly organized and subject to individual pay deals often agreed outside union collective bargaining. The result is that their profession is hugely unattractive, with hourly earnings of €10-14 an hour. That is well below the €17/hour German average—and this for shift-work with significant physical and mental demands.

Given how quickly Germany is aging, Berlin’s plans to add more care workers seem modest: the government promises to fill 13,000 extra jobs by 2019, just a third of the existing gap.

Addressing the lack of affordable housing will be no easier. Berlin has reintroduced a tax credit for home builders and buyers and, in addition, has promised to make €1.5 billion extra available to build social housing. But far more intervention, and greater coordination with the regions, will be required to reverse the trend of 2017, when the number of social housing units actually built shrank by six percent.

In 2017, a federal government report noted how a 50 percent boost in social housing spending in 2017 compared to the previous year “brought no corresponding rise in the building of social apartments,” even though rising rents are putting the squeeze on Germany’s low- and middle-income earners. Experts say that’s because government cash injections are often swallowed up by growing land and construction prices and low interest rates.

Many fear Berlin’s new tax subsidy for house buyers/builders, to a value of up to €12,000 per year, could also miss the mark, driving up prices rather than bringing into the property market some of the 55 percent of Germans who rent. And as Der Spiegel reported, the scheme will end up benefiting wealthier Germans who can afford to buy far more than low-income families who cannot. What’s more, the decentralized nature of Germany’s government leaves Angela Merkel with few levers to influence the pressing housing issue beyond tax subsidies and cash injections.

Education, the third priority for German voters, is another turf war. Post-war rules ensured that education was a matter for the 16 state capitals rather than the federal government. But for more than a decade, Berlin put state capitals under pressure to meet new budget deficit rules, ie cut school spending significantly. In a bid to reverse this, state governments have agreed to relax post-war rules to accept almost €11 billion in federal investment funds.

Plans are underway to renovate moldy schools and kindergartens, increase the number of all-day schools, and boost funds for improved digital infrastructure in education as well.

But the clock is ticking. The SPD has vowed to review the progress in a year’s time to date on the government’s program for the country. After squandering the year since the election, Germany’s grand coalition politicians should enjoy their holidays and come back well-rested. Come autumn, they’ll need to hit the ground running.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

It hasn’t been easy to follow German politics over the past two weeks. Angela Merkel’s CDU and its more conservative, Bavarian sister party, the CSU, have been holding “crisis meetings” nearly every day. Late Monday night, however, an agreement was reached that will stabilize the situation, at least temporarily, and prevent the collapse of the German government.

Here’s a shortish version: The ostensible core dispute was about how to handle “secondary migrants,” migrants who have already applied for asylum in another EU member-state, but who then make their way to Germany. (For context, fewer than 20,000 of these people have entered Germany so far this year; and from January to May 2018, 78,000 people applied for asylum in Germany, compared with 745,000 in the full year of 2016.) According to EU rules, the “Dublin regulation,” the first member-state an asylum-seeker enters is generally responsible for evaluating his or her asylum claim.

The CSU has always taken a harder line on refugees. Horst Seehofer, the party boss and, since April 2018, interior minister, wanted to turn away the secondary migrants at Germany’s border, rather than to try and often fail to return them once they were already in Germany, as is currently the case. Merkel rejected his plans, for fear that unilateral German action would push other member-states to tighten their borders too—the Schengen dominoes, as it were, would fall one by one. In mid-June she asked for more time to find a European solution. The CSU begrudgingly gave her two weeks, until the EU summit.

So Merkel went to an all-night European Council meeting on Thursday, and brought a “European solution” home to Berlin. The EU was to set up “controlled centers” inside the EU—it’s not clear where—to evaluate asylum-seekers claims; member-states would then take in migrants deserving of protection on a voluntary basis. The EU would “explore the concept” of closed camps in North Africa and the Balkans, and stump up more money for Libya and Turkey to deal with refugees themselves. Most relevantly for the spat with Seehofer, Merkel secured a number of bilateral deals with other member-states, including Spain and Greece, who agreed to take back secondary migrants from Germany, largely in return for financial support.

Can’t Get No Satisfaction

Was that enough to satisfy Seehofer? Were Merkel’s bilateral agreements wirkungsgleich (equivalent in effect) to Seehofer’s plans to simply turn away secondary migrants at the border? When the CSU leader threatened to resign on Sunday, it didn’t look like it. But another crisis meeting late Monday night brought about a fragile compromise between the two conservative sister parties, and Seehofer has decided to stay in office.

There are three points to the CDU-CSU deal. First, a new “border regime” on the German-Austrian border will prevent the arrival of refugees for whom “other member-states are responsible.” Second, there will be “transit centers” at the Germany border, where secondary migrants will be held, processed as if they never really entered Germany, and quickly deported to their member-state of arrival thanks to bilateral deals. Third, secondary migrants coming from member-states with whom Germany has no bilateral deal, such as Italy, will be turned away at the German-Austrian border under the terms of an agreement with Austria. Crucially, that deal has yet to be agreed upon.

A debate has exploded in Germany about the merits of the conservatives’ compromise. This is surely not the last time the CSU will challenge Merkel in order to score political points ahead of Bavarian state elections in October.

And will the plan work? Secondary migrants, some of whom risked their lives to cross the Mediterranean in a rickety smuggler’s boat, may not be deterred by spot checks on foreign-looking people at the German-Austrian border. They could cross another border into Germany, or sneak in through the forest, or allow themselves to be taken to a transit center only to disappear somewhere into the country. Transit centers are not prisons. If they were, Merkel’s coalition partner SPD wouldn’t accept them. As it is, Merkel’s grand coalition partner may have trouble accepting this tougher line on migration. Watch this space.

Consequences for the EU

What’s already clear is that the CDU-CSU compromise has consequences for the EU. Germany has no deal to return secondary migrations to Italy, the largest source of such migration. It is unlikely to get one, as Italy’s xenophobic interior minister, the far-right Lega leader Matteo Salvini, wants to stop migrants from entering Italy in the first place, not take more of them from Germany.

Nor is Austria eager to welcome the refugees Germany can’t return to Italy. The right-wing government of Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has already issued a statement: “Should this agreement become the German government’s position, we see that as prompting us to take action to prevent negative consequences for Austria and its population. The Austrian government is therefore prepared to take measures for the protection of our southern border in particular.” Said plainly, that means Vienna is ready to turn back migrants on its borders to Italy and Slovenia—who, again, aren’t eager to be “waiting rooms” for migrants who want to move north.

It is a pernicious myth that Merkel believes in a Europe of uncontrolled migration, where refugees fleeing terror and economic migrants alike are free to go where they please. Nor did she “open Germany’s borders” in 2015. That September, with hundreds of thousands of people walking to Germany from Hungary, the decision she made was to keep the borders open, because Merkel believed in free movement within Europe and Germany’s humanitarian responsibility.

Since then, Merkel’s governments have cut deals abroad to reduce migration and tightened conditions for asylum-seekers in Germany. “Wir schaffen das” always meant “we can handle this”, not “we can do it!” It was less a progressive rallying cry than a determined appeal for calm and focus, and by and large, it worked.

Now, Merkel’s deals with both EU leaders and the CSU depend on voluntary support from member-states that don’t want to give it. Efforts to reform the Dublin regulation or distribute migrants across the EU are going nowhere. At the same time, the EU’s ramshackle migration infrastructure looks shakier than ever, despite irregular migration numbers falling.

Europe’s deals with third countries also raise troubling questions about how long people must stay in a camp, and under what conditions. And the talk of opening up legal immigration avenues for economic migrants is mostly just talk.

Merkel’s vague compromise with Seehofer is another step toward harder European borders, internal and external. That’s the trend in Europe these days.

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© REUTERS/ Remo Casilli

The dust has settled, and a coalition of the League and the 5 Star Movement is governing Italy. Many European commentators have greeted the new government with shock: They worry that Italy will put the eurozone at risk and act as a spoiler within the EU, blocking other countries’ attempts to reform the union and undermining European unity on Russia.

These fears are probably overblown. The friction between Rome and Brussels is likely to be manageable for the time being, in part because domestic politics and international financial markets will constrain Italy’s freedom of action.

But this is not a reason for the EU to be complacent. If the EU does not do more to convince Italians that they benefit from the EU, the chances of Rome becoming more confrontational, and of an Italian exit from the euro or the EU will increase in coming years. This would be a disastrous development for Brussels.

Why do other member-states have concerns about Italy’s new government? The first issue is the new government’s economic program. The coalition has promised a series of tax cuts and increases in social spending, which if implemented would increase the deficit to around seven percent of GDP, breaking a host of EU rules and forcing a showdown with the Commission. But it is very unlikely that the government will even try, let alone be able, to implement such a radical program. A fiscal expansion of such magnitude would panic financial markets, raising the yields on Italy’s debt and hitting Italian banks hard. If financial crisis loomed, Italy’s government would likely step back from the brink. It relies on a small majority in the upper house and could be replaced if MPs defect.

The Five Star and the League know this and have already staged a climb-down. It now appears that the planned tax cuts will unfold over time, while the promise of a universal basic income has turned into a promise of an enhanced unemployment benefit limited to two years. In reality, both may never happen. Instead of embarking on a collision course with the markets and the EU, Rome is much likelier to simply run a slightly higher deficit, in the order of 2.5 to 3 percent of GDP. This would violate the EU’s Fiscal Compact, which mandates small ‘structural’ deficits (deficits adjusted to economic cycles) and speedy debt reduction—allowing coalition leaders Matteo Salvini and Luigi di Maio to celebrate Italian liberation from the ‘diktats’ of Brussels. But it would not panic international bond markets.

In fact, the key problem presented by the new government in Rome is not its economic policy as such, but that it will make reform of the eurozone more difficult. For the 5 Star Movement and the League, stricter European oversight of national governments’ financial and fiscal policies is a non-starter. Yet such oversight is precisely what Germany and northern member-state demand in exchange for deeper risk-sharing in the EU. They will not trust this Italian government to carry out significant risk reduction in its banking system. As a result, any move towards banking union will be slowed down.

Aside from economic policy, analysts are concerned about the new government’s foreign policy, particularly its position towards Russia. The Five Star and especially the League are friendly towards Moscow. In his inaugural speech PM Giuseppe Conte called for a ‘revision’ of sanctions. Italy’s stance, combined with the relative rapprochement between the EU and Russia prompted by Donald Trump’s trade tariffs and withdrawal from the Iran deal, has raised the possibility that the EU could ease sanctions over the next year. However, Italy is unlikely to push for a removal of sanctions by itself. Doing so would drain political capital that Rome would rather use in the economic sphere, where it could be tempted to use the threat of vetoing sanctions as leverage. Instead of attempting to ease sanctions, it is far likelier that Italy will attempt a balancing act, seeking to maintain EU unity while also boosting political and trade ties with Moscow. Many Italian politicians, of all stripes, do not see this as a contradiction—and point to Nord Stream 2, the controversial pipeline that will bring Russian gas to Germany, as evidence that other member-states have long been practicing this.

This Italian government will also be friendlier towards the Trump administration than many in the EU. Rome will probably seek to use its foreign policy influence to prevent or limit escalation in the transatlantic trade war. At the G7 meeting last week, the Italian PM expressed his skepticism about escalating the ongoing dispute with Trump. Italy is not the only member-state to doubt the wisdom of escalating the spat with the US: Germany has also taken on a softer stance than France. And other states, such as Poland and the Baltics, have sought to maintain good relations with Trump because of their reliance on the US for deterring Russia. They, too, are likely to shy away from further escalation, giving Italy some allies.

In essence, Italy is unlikely to act as a spoiler. While Rome will argue with Brussels and work to soften Europe’s stance towards Russia and the Trump tariffs, it almost certainly will not pursue radical economic policies incompatible with euro membership or seek to remove all sanctions on Russia.

The EU’s job: Compromise with the Italians

But in the medium-term, things could get worse. Brussels should not be complacent about Italy. Italians feel the EU has abandoned them in the eurozone crisis and the migration crisis. They have become much more critical of the EU than they were prior to 2008: The latest Eurobarometer survey shows only 44 percent think EU membership has benefited Italy.

The EU should try to work with the government in Rome. It should allow Rome to slightly raise spending—especially if this comes in the form of investment—and thereby secure a symbolic victory over Brussels. As things stand, it appears that the EU will open ‘an excessive deficit procedure’ in response to increased Italian deficits. The procedure would monitor the Italian budget and suggest corrections to Italian finances. The political impact of this familiar move could be contained: Spain is still in the procedure, while France was in the procedure from 2009-2018 and escaped Commission fines. But if the EU ends up issuing Italy a fine, it will merely reinforce the idea that the EU dictates Italian policy, and encourage the Five Star and the League to lash out and espouse more uncompromising positions. A small fiscal expansion may even have the effect of boosting growth and lowering the overall debt/GDP ratio.

The EU should also step up its efforts to help Italy manage migration flows. So far, the EU has focused its efforts on reforming the Dublin regulation, which stipulates that the first member-state an asylum-seeker enters is generally responsible for determining that person’s asylum status. But reform has stalled. It is difficult to imagine that member-states will be able to agree on a relocation scheme of a sufficient magnitude to take the pressure off frontline countries. Additionally, the Dublin-centric approach does little to address factors that push people to migrate, and the difficulties that member-states have in returning rejected asylum-seekers to their countries of origin. A better way for the EU to show solidarity with Italy would be to put money on the table to persuade African countries to sign agreements to take back their citizens. It should make available funds of the same order of magnitude as the €6 billion already pledged to Turkey.

If the EU does not do more to convince Italians that the EU benefits them, Italians are likely to become even more euroskeptic – to the extent that leaving the euro would no longer appear unthinkable. If Italy defaulted and left the euro, the ensuing financial crisis could lead to the unravelling of the euro, and fracture the EU.

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© REUTERS/ Bernadett Szabo

After a landslide victory at the ballot boxes for his Fidesz party in April, Hungary’s strongman, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, has wasted no time continuing his crusade against civil society.

He has set his sights squarely upon NGOs funded by US billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, as well as the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest, which Soros founded. Orbán’s aim is to continue the omnipresent political campaign against migrants and liberalism in order to distract from massive corruption in his government and among his supporters; he also aims to consolidate his place as the main anti-liberal ideologue in Europe.

On Tuesday Orbán’s government submitted the so-called “Stop Soros” legislation package. The legislation further restricts NGOs working on migration; it also makes it more difficult to monitor the government’s migration policy, and easier to crack down on its critics. Meanwhile, Orbán is refusing to sign a deal with CEU that would secure the university’s future in Budapest.

The bill, according to a briefing by Fidesz group leader Mate Kocsis on Monday, will make “organizing illegal migration” a crime. How is this defined? For example, assisting people who have not been victims of persecution at home to initiate an asylum procedure would become illegal. Such deeds would be punishable by 5-90 days behind bars. The question of determining whether someone was persecuted, however, usually takes place during the asylum procedure itself. Distributing information leaflets on migration and monitoring the border for human rights or asylum law violations would also count as illegal “organization”, according to Kocsis.

Finally, Fidesz also plans to use its two-thirds majority in parliament to amend the constitution to ensure that the EU cannot force Hungary to accept migrants. Orbán wants the Stop Soros bill passed by parliament by June 20.

The Hungarian government already tightened regulations on foreign-funded NGOs in June of last year. That legislation broke EU rules, according to the European Commission, which referred the law to the European Court of Justice last December. But it could be years before the ECJ makes a decision, and until then, the law remains in force—of course, that was part of Orbán’s strategy.

Civil Society Under Pressure

Many Hungarians support these measures. The prime minister’s loyalists argue that NGOs are taking up a political role without having been elected.

“Those loopholes that still exist in the legal system that allow organizations not entitled…to meddle in political decision-making should be closed,” government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said after April’s elections. Yet it is the government’s onslaught on human rights that forced some NGOs to take a stance in the political arena.

Orbán’s government claims it wants to ensure greater transparency, but NGOs say the legislation and the accompanying government propaganda has stigmatized them and their work. While some NGOs have decided to comply with the government’s new demands, many of those dealing with migration and human rights initially refused. But then Orban stepped up the pressure: After the election, government-friendly media published the names of some 200 people working in migration, including members of the human rights organization Amnesty International, the anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, refugee advocates, investigative journalists, and faculty members from CEU.

The publication of the list revived memories of the darkest days in Hungary’s history and shook up civil society. In response, Soros’s Open Society Foundation (OSF) removed all names and contact details of its Budapest employees from its website, citing concerns over the security of staff. A month later, the OSF decided to relocate its regional headquarters from Budapest to Berlin, blaming “an increasingly repressive political and legal environment.” The pro-democracy foundation has helped to transform post-communist Hungary into a liberal democracy, but it is clearly no longer welcome in Orbán’s illiberal state.

Some of the threatened NGOs are forging ahead, saying they are receiving more funding from individual citizens. “We have received many supportive messages,” said Marta Pardavi, co-chair of the Hungarian Helsinki Committee, which provides legal services for asylum-seekers, including from EU ambassadors. Nevertheless some partners – typically public institutions involved in implementing projects—are reluctant to continue their work under political pressure.

CEU’s Fate Up in the Air

It’s not all about migration. Orbán is not backing down is his battle against the Central European University either. For the prime minister and his far-right friends, who want to protect the nation state and a perceived European Christian identity from globalization and multiculturalism, the liberal institution is another pillar in a world order that they see as outdated. Indeed, in early May, Orban welcomed Steve Bannon, the far-right former chief strategist to Donald Trump who denounces liberal migration policies and “the EU” at every turn.

After the government amended the higher education law, a deal to secure CEU’s future appeared to be within reach last autumn. But Orban has yet to sign off the agreement. CEU says it has done everything to comply with the government’s requests, including opening a US campus. Foreign minister Peter Szijjarto said last week that the government is awaiting a report from a government committee that visited the US campus in April. Zsolt Enyedi, CEU’s pro-rector and a political scientist, says the government is clearly stonewalling.

Enyedi told me that, in order to start planning for the next academic year, the university would like to have certainty from the government by graduation at the end of June. “By then, we would like to be able to tell our students something,” he said.

He added that he thinks the government’s delay could be a tactic to force CEU to force to Vienna, or to use the university as a bargaining chip in talks with Brussels and Washington. “By now it is clear that the government cannot hide behind professional and regulatory reasons, the question is whether the prime minister wants to kick out CEU from Hungary or not,” he said.

An Illiberal State

 In 2014 Viktor Orban set out to build what he called an illiberal state. The announcement was met with surprise, disbelief, and even amusement among observers. But four years later, Orban has scored three consecutive election victories and plans to stay in power until at least 2030.

Enyedi said Orban has been successful in dismantling the institutional checks and balances in Hungary’s liberal democracy, but he has not been completely successful in convincing Hungarians that liberal democracy is a bad thing. “The average Hungarian still sees his/her future in a western-type liberal democracy and in the EU, but there is uncertainty, which partly stems from the EU’s uncertainty,” he said. “People perceive that real power is with the anti-liberal populist forces rather than the EU, while the EU has been increasingly seen as a fragmented and weak project.” For a leader seeking to build an illiberal democracy in Europe, a “weak” EU is a very good thing.

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© Josh Raisher

Under the terms of the agreement between Turkey and the EU, “irregular migrants” who arrive in Greece from Turkey from March 20 onward – i.e. those who have not applied for asylum or whose asylum applications have already been rejected – will be returned to Turkey; in exchange, for each Syrian returned from Greece, a Syrian in Turkey will be resettled within the EU. Turkey is also set to receive a number of benefits: Turkish citizens will, as of the end of June 2016, be permitted to travel visa-free within the EU; Turkey will receive €3 billion to aide in its efforts to accommodate the refugees within its borders, roughly two million as of December 2015; and Turkish accession to the EU will be put back on the agenda.

The hope underpinning the deal is that, by rendering the illegal routes futile, the joint action plan will put the smugglers out of business, and discourage asylum seekers from risking the dangerous journey over the Aegean Sea.

The agreement, however, met with immediate backlash from a number of concerned organizations – among them Medecines Sans Frontières (MSF) and the UNHCR, both of which have withdrawn their support from Greek registration camps in response. Aurélie Ponthieu, MSF Humanitarian Adviser on Displacement, said that the deal “shows once again how European leaders have completely lost track of reality.”

One of the concerns regards Greece’s capacity to implement the provisions of the agreement humanely: in preparation for the deportation of asylum seekers already on the Greek islands, registration centers have been converted into closed detention centers. This is the step MSF found particularly objectionable, saying of its decision to leave the Moria registration camp: “We will not allow our assistance to be instrumentalized for a mass expulsion operation.” There is also a fear that, given the numbers involved, Greek authorities will be unable to consider asylum applications individually, instead making blanket decisions based on nationality – a step that would contravene the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees.

An even greater concern, though, is the reception asylum seekers will receive once they arrive in Turkey.

The agreement hinges on Turkey’s definition as a “safe third country” under European criteria: a country that offers refugees a reasonable expectation of safety, to which refugees can be sent under European law. Under the terms of the agreement, Turkey has promised that refugees sent back will be treated in accordance with international law, and will not be forced to return to their countries of origin. They can apply for asylum in Turkey, and once flows to Europe have been brought under control, a “Voluntary Humanitarian Admission Scheme” is supposed to be activated to manage their distribution.

However, while Turkey has been recognizing Syrians’ claim to asylum, it has approved a worryingly low percentage of their applications, and refuses to recognize any at all from other countries, including Afghanistan and Iraq. According to a December 2015 Amnesty International report, the Turkish government has been detaining refugees and asylum seekers indefinitely, refusing access to communication with the outside world – and has in some cases forced them to return to their home countries, despite promises to the contrary. Hours after the new EU-Turkey agreement went into effect, Turkey forcibly returned 30 Afghan refugees to Kabul. Ankara claimed their return was “voluntary”; Amnesty International disputes this. And with Turkish treatment of refugees now in the spotlight, reports of even graver abuses are emerging: on March 31, the Times of London learned of 16 Syrian migrants, including three children, who were shot by Turkish border guards while attempting to enter the country.

No Medicine, No Bus Ticket

Until the EU-Turkey agreement went into effect, there were two refugee camps outside the village of Moria on the island of Lesbos: the official registration center, the so-called “hot spot” that opened in July 2015 where asylum seekers arriving from Turkey could register with the EU external borders agency Frontex; and, in an olive grove directly outside its concrete and barbed wire perimeter, Better Days for Moria, a volunteer-run transit camp founded in November 2015 to house the overwhelming number of new arrivals until they could be processed. In March, the vast majority of Better Days for Moria’s roughly 650 residents were Pakistanis, most of whom were ineligible for asylum. Now, with the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement, the registration center has become one of the closed detention facilities, and Better Days for Moria has closed, its residents moved to the detention facility or to the harbor at Mytilene to be sent to Turkey.

Qamar, a Pakistani journalist who reported on government connections to organized crime, lived at the Better Days for Moria camp until its closure. He chose to flee Pakistan after his life and the lives of his wife and three children were threatened; his family, which could not follow him, lives in hiding at the home of a relative. Like many other Pakistanis, he traveled through Iran and then Turkey on his way to Greece. In Turkey, refugees – Pakistanis in particular – are frequently harassed by the police, and forced to rely on illicit networks to procure even basic goods. “We cannot get medicine, we cannot get a bus ticket, we cannot go through the market…We have to remain outside the city.”

Many of the refugees who remain in Lesbos, in fact, are from countries that fall outside the purview of the recent agreement entirely: in addition to the Iraqis and Afghans, there are Pakistanis, Iranians, Bangladeshis, and Moroccans, among many others; and within those populations, there are individuals from vulnerable national minorities, including Yazidis and Baluchis, many of whom are not safe in their home countries.

The Pakistanis are in a particularly difficult situation: Pakistan has been refusing to readmit those who are sent back, returning them instead to Turkey and rendering them essentially stateless. Aqib, another former Better Days for Moria resident, fled the Pakistani-controlled part of Kashmir, an area of persistent fighting between Indian and Pakistani forces as well as Islamist militants; he lost his brother and mother before leaving. He too traveled through Iran and Turkey on his way to Europe. In Istanbul, he says, those who look Pakistani are “targeted and killed.”

“Turkey now is considered the first safe country – but Turkey is not safe,” says Camilla Lynge, a 31-year old from Denmark who worked at Better Days for Moria for two months. “The refugees’ stories about the Turkish coast guard, how they are flooding their boats, how they are hunting them on the sea, even times where they have punctured their rubber boats, refugees who have been beaten up by the Turkish police…Turkey hasn’t shown any of the people who came here to Lesbos any humanity.”

Aside from the dangers the agreement poses to refugees’ safety, it may not even reduce the total refugee influx over the longer term – in attempting to close the Aegean route, it may simply push more asylum seekers to attempt to cross the Mediterranean to Italy, as was common a year ago.

If the European Union wants to achieve a lasting solution to the refugee crisis, the focus needs to be at the beginnings and endings of the refugee flows – improving the speed and transparency of asylum adjudications in Europe (and devoting significant resources to integrating those granted asylum), and becoming more engaged in solving the “push” factors in countries of origin. The current arrangement does neither, serving only to erect an obstacle in the middle – and by turning Turkey into Europe’s waiting room, it is only creating a crisis elsewhere.

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