Artwork © Dominik Herrmann

The landslide victory that Greece’s conservatives under their new leader Kyriakos Mitsotakis won in July 2019 didn’t just mark their return to power. Greece, the European country hit hardest by the financial crisis of 2008, also voted in its first post-bailout government. The price for remaining in the eurozone had been high: Since 2008, Greece lost 25 percent of its GDP and saw its unemployment rate soar by 16 percentage points. After a decade of extreme austerity measures, Mitsotakis and his Nea Dimokratia (New Democracy) party represented the promise of recovery.

Mitsotakis, a 52-year-old Harvard-educated politician came to power promising a “return to normality” that many Greeks yearned for. This was particularly true for the middle classes, which had been hit hard by the taxes imposed by the previous left-wing government to meet the country’s fiscal targets. Mitsotakis’ name was already well-known on Greece’s political scene. His family is one of three that have dominated Greek politics for decades, together with the Karamanlis family (also Nea Dimokratia) and the Papandreou family (Socialist Party).

Mitsotakis’ father Konstantinos was a prominent, but also controversial political figure during the 1960s, before the military coup. He became prime minister in the early 1990s—a toxic period in Greek politics that was marked by scandals. Konstantinos’ oldest daughter Dora Bakoyannis was mayor of Athens when the city hosted the Olympic Games in 2004; she later served as foreign minister. Kyriakos Mitsotakis, however, remained in the shadow of his family for much of his career. He was an outsider of whom nobody ever believed that he would become the leader of Nea Dimokratia or prime minister.

A Liberal Centrist

Indeed, Mitsotakis has often been underestimated by his political opponents. He was first elected to parliament in 2004; between 2013 and 2015, he then served as minister of administrative reform in the last New Democracy-led government. Mitsotakis is still remembered as the minister who dismissed 5,000 civil servants to meet the strict conditions of Greece’s second bailout program. For that, he was criticized as a tough neoliberal, making many enemies in the public sector.

In fact, Mitsotakis is more of a liberal centrist within a conservative party that has moved toward the right. The people he has selected to form his government show his effort to unite different political traditions within his party, including nationalist, liberals, and non-political technocrats. However, Mitsotakis’ government is made up mainly of men, and the few women occupy junior roles.

Initially, Mitsotakis’ agenda was focused on cutting taxes and creating jobs by bringing domestic and foreign investment to the country. His well-publicized “strategic priority” was the reduction of the primary surplus targets that were imposed by the European institutions which still keep a close eye on the country’s finances. However, his plans for an economic resurgence have been overshadowed by three serious challenges: the refugee crisis, tensions with Turkey, and the coronavirus outbreak.

Dealing with the Refugee Crisis

Mitsotakis was also elected on the promise that he would handle the ongoing refugee crisis better, but his government is still struggling with the same issues that the previous government had to grapple with. During his first months in office, the flows of migrants were at their highest since the now-defunct EU-Turkey agreement was concluded in 2016, and the new government found itself in a very difficult position.

There are nearly 100,000 asylum seekers in Greece, most of them on the islands of Lesvos, Kos, Chios, and Samos. It is clear that local communities have reached their limits as far as taking in refugees and migrants are concerned. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, pointed out on a recent visit to Greece that “hospitality and patience are less visible than before.”

Mitsotakis’ government did take steps to speed up asylum application processes. Deportations were made easier, as were transfers of refugees from the islands to mainland Greece. However, it took Mitsotakis six months to realize that it had been a huge mistake to abolish the Migration Ministry and to set it up again.

The Trouble with Turkey

Greece’s refugee crisis is made more difficult by the second challenge facing its prime minister: Dealing with his country’s historically difficult neighbor, Turkey, and in particular the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Tensions between Turkey and Greece have been exacerbated by Erdogan’s threats and actions over migrants. Mitsotakis found himself in the middle of a new border crisis as Turkey’s president carried out his threat to open the gates to Europe for migrants and refugees. Overnight, thousands of people were brought to the north-western land border between Greece and Turkey.

Mitsotakis responded by mobilizing EU support, bringing European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel, and the President of the European Parliament, David Sassoli, to the country in a highly symbolic move, stressing that not just Greece’s, but Europe’s frontiers were being threatened. He also reinforced Greece’s sea and land borders and extended a razor wire-topped fence along the Evros River.

The geopolitical crisis with Turkey, however, doesn’t stop there. Under Erdogan, Turkey has become more nationalist and more aggressive, seeking to expand its role in a new world marked by great power competition. Tensions between the two countries, which are NATO allies but also historically rivals, have also escalated over energy reserves in the Eastern Mediterranean.

Turkey was angered by gas and oil explorations planned off the coasts of Greece and Cyprus and moved ahead with its own drillings. Then Erdogan went further by signing a maritime boundaries agreement with the UN-backed Libyan government in a move to show to both Greece and Cyprus that Turkey cannot be ignored in the region.

Athens regards this as a direct challenge to its national sovereignty, as the Turkish-Libyan accord ignores the island of Crete and its Exclusive Economic Zone that is situated between Libya and Turkey. Like his predecessors, Mitsotakis is trying to strengthen strategic alliances to deal with this crisis, mainly with France, other EU member states, and the United States. But he has also made it clear that if there is no solution at a political or diplomatic level, then the dispute over maritime zones must go to the International Court of Justice in the Hague.

Fighting COVID-19

The war of words between Turkey and Greece was still ongoing, when the coronavirus outbreak took over the global agenda. The pandemic forced the Turkish president to suspend his “open gates” action.

The coronavirus outbreak in Greece could have been a disaster, as its health sector was significantly downsized and weakened during the financial crisis—today, it is nearly 40 percent smaller than in 2008. Nevertheless, Greece currently has one of the lowest number of cases and deaths in the EU.

The Greek prime minister has been praised for reacting to the crisis much faster than neighboring countries: he imposed a lockdown when there had not yet been a single death in the country. Trusting the experts and took that risk in order to protect citizens’ lives and shore up the health system as everybody knew that it wouldn’t be able to cope with a major outbreak.

Mitsotakis has also been winning the communication game by choosing two relatively unknown person to speak for the government during the crisis. Sotiris Tsiodras, a low-profile professor of infectious diseases, and Nokia Chardalias, the hard-hitting deputy minister for civic protection, have proven to be a perfect couple to address the public and explain the measures in daily briefings.

However, Mitsotakis’ next challenge is on the horizon. The latest IMF forecasts show that Greece could see a ten percent decline in GDP—the biggest in COVID-19-stricken Europe. Unemployment is likely to rise again sharply. Problems on the labor market had already started appearing before coronavirus hit, and the support the opposition is giving Mitsotakis him for the sake of public health is not going to last forever.

There is already some criticism over financial support to businesses and workers. And although ideologically Mitsotakis is a strong supporter of the private sector, he is obliged to invest more in the public health system in order to prepare the country for the months to come. Yet his popularity, which is still high, may well see him through.

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© REUTERS/Thomas Peter

Is it unsafe for Jewish men to wear the traditional kippah (or yarmulke) cap in public in modern Germany? Or should Germans of all religions wear it proudly, as a sign of solidarity?

The fact that the German government official tasked with combating anti-Semitism represented both positions within a week shows how issue has, in recent years, become more relevant for all the wrong reasons.

The official, Felix Klein, warned of rising anti-Semitism on May 25, saying, “I cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah all the time and everywhere in Germany.” He blamed “society’s increasing brutalization and loss of inhibition,” adding that he had “unfortunately changed his position” on this issue in recent times.

The criticism came quickly. Jewish organizations have issued similar warnings in the past, but hearing it from a representative of the state charged with public safety was different. Michel Friedman, a former vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, said that “the government is apparently failing to make [freedom of religion] possible for all Jewish citizens.” Israeli President Reuven Rivlin also got involved, saying Klein’s statement was a “capitulation” and “admission that Jews on German soil are again not safe”.

An Official Wake-up Call

By May 27, Antisemitismus-Beauftragter Klein was explaining himself to the tabloid newspaper BILD, clarifying that his warning was meant to “shake up the public” and make clear the need for action. He received some support from the current president of the Jewish council, Josef Schuster: “It has been a fact for quite some time that Jews in some big cities are potentially exposed to danger if they are recognizable as Jews.”

Klein’s week in the news culminated with an appeal for Germans to wear a kippah in solidarity. He called on citizens to show their support by attending a counter-protest in Berlin against a planned march for Al-Quds Day, a “holiday” called into being by Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in the 1970s in order to protest Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory—Al-Quds is the Arabic name for Jerusalem. Every year in Berlin, demonstrators display both anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic signs and, with Hezbollah sympathizers and even a few neo-Nazis in their midst, shout about their hate for Jews. It is illegal in Germany to burn flags or advertise for Hezbollah, but a ban on the protest would probably not hold up in court.

The police counted about 1,000 demonstrators at this year’s march, chanting slogans like “Child murderer Israel.” Opposite the Al-Quds marchers stood about 300 counter-demonstrators, with Israeli pop music blasting through their speakers.

A Sense of Insecurity

The official statistics back up the sense of insecurity in the Jewish community. While politically motivated crime was down from 2017, it was still at its third-highest level since 2001, when the statistic was introduced. The police recorded 62 violent anti-Semitic acts in 2018, up from 37 the previous year. The violence was only a small percentage of more than 1,800 violent anti-Semitic crimes, a category that includes hate speech or signs displaying banned symbols like the swastika.

The right wing of German society is primarily responsible for these anti-Semitic crimes. Interior Minister Horst Seehofer stated in May that almost 90 percent of these acts could be attributed to “right-wing crime”—as Foreign Minister Heiko Maas commented, anti-Semitism in Germany is obviously not an “import product.” The populist right-wing Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), which questions Germany’s culture of atonement for the Holocaust, is on the rise in the East; the people of Chemnitz, a city in Saxony formerly known as Karl Marx City, have in the last year alone witnessed both right-wing groups making Hitler salutes before attacking foreigners and the public celebration of a professed neo-Nazi at a football match.

But neo-Nazis are far from the only culprits; Islamic anti-Semitism is also a factor. Emblematic of Jews’ growing insecurity, a video of a Palestinian asylum-seeker from Syria whipping a kippah-wearing man with a belt in Berlin’s tony Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood went viral in 2018. A recent study by the Foundation for Remembrance, Responsibility, and Future found that anti-Semitic attitudes and behavior are disproportionately strongly represented among Muslim minorities in western Europe. Crucially, though, the study did not find a “meaningful relationship between the Middle-Eastern migrants and the extent and form of anti-Semitism in western Europe”.

That doesn’t necessarily mean there is no Islamist element to the threat in some big German cities, as the Berlin Al-Quds march demonstrates. Two Jews were attacked at that demonstration in 2018. There were millions of Muslims in Germany well before the refugee crisis of 2015. Benjamin Steinitz of the anti-Semitism research center RIAS has argued that there are  motives “from a Muslim context” and far-left and far-right motives for the crimes, as well “daily statements from the middle of society.”

Who Drew the Swastika?

Some German conservatives, especially the AfD, are eager to emphasize the Muslim element of anti-Semitism and obscure broader society’s role in order to score political points. But critics make a good point about the questionable reliability of the statistics Seehofer quoted to say right-wingers were “90 percent” responsible. For example, the Berlin police has admitted that it attributes cases without a clear motive to right-wingers. (When the crime is painting a swastika, this is somewhat understandable.) Klein himself told the New York Times that the methodology was flawed and he has asked the government to change it.

“The right strategy”, Klein says, “is to denounce any form of anti-Semitism.” In other words, for those treating belt whip wounds or scrubbing racist insults from their doors, it is less important who did it than that they be stopped.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Almost a decade ago, when the euro crisis brought Europe to the brink, I asked a senior official working for German Chancellor Angela Merkel why Berlin was being so ruthlessly hardline and orthodox about imposing austerity measures on already struggling crisis countries. Surely it was possible to adopt a softer touch at least in public to avoid humiliation, I suggested, “because eventually Berlin will need a favor from these countries.”

Then, the Merkel official saw things differently, but he may have changed his mind by now. Last week I watched him follow the chancellor into an informal meeting in Brussels, the so-called mini summit on migration policy, which took place less than a week before the European Council’s end-of-June meeting. Officially, it was about creating an opportunity to sound out the appetite in Europe for closer cooperation on the continent’s unresolved refugee problem. In reality, it was about favors: Merkel was testing her partners’ readiness for an expedited deal to save her coalition government, the center-right political CDU/CSU alliance, and her chancellorship.

Three years after more than a million people arrived in Germany, the migration crisis is dominating headlines again. This time it’s not about numbers—most agree they have fallen significantly, in Germany and across the continent—but about a lingering grudge match between the chancellor and her conservative Bavarian allies, the Christian Social Union (CSU).

After swallowing their pride and following Merkel’s initial open door policy in 2015/2016, they worry that unresolved asylum tensions and public security concerns will see them fall short of an absolute majority in the Bavarian state election in October for the first time since World War II.

Alarmed, CSU leader and federal interior minister Horst Seehofer has threatened to close German borders to people already refused asylum, or to those who have already been registered as asylum-seekers elsewhere in the EU. He says he will do this unless Merkel can convince her EU allies to agree to measures achieving an equivalent end before July 1.

Merkel has warned that closing Germany’s borders could trigger the domino effect across Europe she tried to avoid in 2015 by keeping borders open. If Seehofer proceeds with the closure against her wishes, she has to fire him. His CSU would then pull out of government, and her fourth-term coalition, which marked 100 days in office at the end of June, would collapse.

A CSU Gun to the Chancellor’s Head

With a CSU gun to her head, Merkel has been forced into crisis diplomacy mode, attempting to pull off in days the kind of EU refugee deal that the continent has failed to secure in more than three years. Leaving the refugee issue unresolved has resulted in a very different political climate in Europe now as compared to 2015 (even with far fewer new arrivals) and emboldened populist and right-wing governments in Italy, Austria, Central Europe, and Scandinavia. As if on cue, ahead of the mini-summit of 17 European leaders in Brussels, Italy and Malta turned back a ship filled with 239 rescued asylum-seekers.

While Merkel demands a pan-European deal, CSU pressure has forced her into seeking bi- or trilateral deals, similar to that struck with Turkey in 2016, to stop large numbers of asylum-seekers from reaching Germany and Europe. But Italy, one of the countries she needs a deal with, has a new populist government demanding an overhaul of the EU’s so-called Dublin rules. These oblige member states to process asylum-seekers that first enter the EU across its borders. They place a heavy burden on Italy, Greece, and Spain.

Rome is pushing to scrap the Dublin regulation and create offshore migrant screening centers in Africa. But, as the EU Commission has noted, no African country has come forward to host such “regional disembarkation centers,” as they’re being called. French President Emmanuel Macron, who earlier agreed to take back from Germany asylum-seekers already registered in France, criticized member states who benefit from EU solidarity yet “voice massive national selfishness when it comes to migrant issues.” New Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez agreed there is still much work to do, but that a clear, common understanding is emerging of a need for a European vision to deal with the challenge.

Not everyone is that optimistic. Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Luigi Di Maio attacked Paris for “pushing back people” over their shared border and warned on Facebook that France could be “Italy’s No. 1 enemy on this emergency.” In Brussels, Italy’s partners remain unsure about who speaks for the new government in Rome: Di Maio, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, or Interior Minister Matteo Salvini of the far-right League.

In addition, Berlin officials close to Merkel—aware that they are on the back foot—are alert for horse-trading approaches from countries like Italy and Greece, on banking and sovereign debt respectively, that would be political dynamite back in Germany.

Other EU countries are clearly less interested in extracting favors from Merkel. They sense a golden opportunity to weaken or even topple the German leader. Since 2015, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have refused to accept mandatory quotas to redistribute accepted asylum-seekers across the bloc. They stayed away from the weekend gathering, with Polish Prime Minister Matteusz Morawiecki speaking for all them in dismissing “warmed-up” quota proposals “we’ve already rejected.”

Shuttling Diplomacy

Shuttling between the various camps is a relatively new leader on the European stage: Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz (see also our Close-Up in this issue). From July 1, Merkel’s day of reckoning, the head of Vienna’s anti-immigration populist coalition is also the head of the EU’s rotating presidency.

As foreign minister in 2015, Kurz faced down Merkel by closing the so-called Balkan route without consulting Berlin. He then told the German tabloid Bild that it was “good and necessary” that she, “like most in Europe, changed her migration path massively.” The Austrian leader, who leads a coalition government with the far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), is pushing for ironclad border controls around Europe. Crisscrossing Europe in recent days, he has picked up an impressive list of like-minded allies.

Top of the class is Bavarian state premier Markus Söder, reportedly the driving force behind the CSU push against Merkel. But for all their concern over asylum ahead of October’s state election, three quarters of Bavarians told the Forsa polling agency that they see other pressing problems that are “just as or even more important” than migration. And more than two thirds of Bavarians—68 percent—actually back Angela Merkel’s efforts to seek agreement at EU level over following a CSU national strategy.

Still, as the clock ticks down for Angela Merkel, even breaking the refugee deadlock is not certain to save her. Her Bavarian frenemies insist they will have the last word on whether any new EU measures obviate the need for national measures. They need credible proposals to rescue their looming election and save face in Berlin.

Offering them a way out of the political corner they have painted themselves into in Bavaria, and avoiding political tremors in Germany and across Europe, will require a soft, but firm diplomatic touch in Berlin—now more than ever.

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© REUTERS / Michele Tantussi

The signs of trouble emerged earlier this week, when Interior Minister Horst Seehofer of the CSU announced he would delay the presentation of his “migration master plan” – a blueprint for Germany’s strategy for handling migration going forward.

The CSU wants Germany to turn away asylum-seekers at the border if they’ve already been registered in other European countries, or if they’ve already been refused asylum in Germany.

Merkel, however, has rejected the idea of Germany taking unilateral action (this is the only point in Seehofer’s master plan, incidentally, which Merkel does not support). She wants a European solution, or failing that, bilateral deals with countries like Italy. Either of those would allow for a legal, orderly way of returning migrants. A unilateral rejection of asylum-seekers at the border, on the other hand, could trigger a domino effect in which other countries close their borders, too. That would ultimately push the burden squarely onto countries like Greece and Italy, which have already taken in a large share of migrants and refugees.

Merkel also argues that unilateral action could make the entire migration process far more complicated than it already is. If pre-registered asylum-seekers are rejected at the German border, other European countries might simply stop registering asylum-seekers. That would make the entire process more chaotic, not less. That certainly isn’t in Germany’s interest.

That is why Merkel is fighting for more time – two weeks to hammer out a shared solution with Germany’s European partners. But her critics argue that she has already spent years trying to do so. The CSU sees its credibility at stake with a key regional election looming this fall; it is keen to appear tough on migration, an issue that continues to roil the country. The case of an Iraqi asylum-seeker suspected of raping and killing a 14-year-old girl, Susanna F., and the ongoing scandal surrounding Germany’s refugee authority – accused of incorrectly approving thousands of asylum cases – have heightened tensions in recent weeks. The CSU wants to show its voters in Bavaria that it‘s taking action.

The rift among Merkel’s conservative bloc escalated so dramatically on Thursday that many in government circles were discussing the possibility of a vote of no confidence that could oust Merkel. A Bundestag session was interrupted as CDU and CSU lawmakers held separate meetings.

A high-ranking leader of the CSU described the conflict with the CDU as “very serious.” There were rumors of the two breaking their union, an alliance that has stood for decades. That would lead to an historic shift in German politics. According to German newspaper Welt, a CSU parliamentarian went as far as telling a CDU lawmaker that Merkel doesn’t care about the German “Volk,” or people.

What’s at Stake

The debate is as much about individual policy as it is about larger principles. German conservatives have long complained that Angela Merkel has abandoned the center-right in favor of the center. Under her leadership, the military draft was abolished. Her government introduced a minimum wage. Germany has decided to phase out nuclear power and hard-working German tax payers have “bailed out” other European countries. Gay marriage is now legal. All of these decisions were controversial amongst Christian Democrats, but none of them are as significant as Merkel’s handling of the refugee crisis. Many members of her own CDU caucus support Seehofer’s hardliner approach.

The situation is all the more dangerous for Merkel because the conflict ultimately isn’t about the individual policy decisions. It’s about her handling of the refugee crisis as a whole. Merkel is now trying to buy time in order strike a compromise that’s favorable to German partners abroad and the CSU at home. While the conservatives argue among themselves, meanwhile, the other parties profit. The Social Democrats have called on the CDU and CSU to stop arguing and start concentrating on governing the country. The Free Democrats  have called for a vote on Seehofer’s policy in order to demonstrate to everyone just how divided the conservative bloc is.

At this point, creating a compromise that allows both Merkel and the CSU to save face will be incredibly difficult. CSU leaders have staked their credibility on winning this battle months before Bavarian elections in October. If Merkel fails to find a compromise abroad in the next couple of weeks and the CSU doesn’t back down, she can either give in to Seehofer’s demands or enter an open confrontation that could well cost her the chancellery.

There is a more immediate concern, as well. Seehofer could use the nuclear option of going above Merkel’s head and make an executive decision on turning asylum-seekers away at the border. Merkel would then face an impossible choice: She could let him get away with implementing a policy she has clearly rejected or fire him. If she lets him get away with it, her authority will disintegrate. If she fires the leader of the Christian Social Union, the government will collapse. Either way, her position would be under threat.

Angela Merkel is in serious trouble, but there is still good reason to believe that she will survive the crisis. Her critics have an incentive to appear tough on migration, but not to topple their own chancellor. Merkel continues to be popular, after all. Her critics need her to appeal to the center; she needs her critics in order to appeal to more conservative voters. In the end, Merkel is most likely going to stay in power by finding a way to make everyone a little unhappy, but not too much.

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© REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch

On February 20, German authorities rounded up 14 Afghan men to return to their home country in spite of protests and the very real threats they would face upon their return. These forced returns of rejected asylum seekers had become an issue in Germany’s elections last September: In part due to the growing political influence of the far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), Angela Merkel’s CDU has embraced a harder line on migration, and celebrated a decision made by the German foreign office in August of 2017 to bolster the deportation process.

In fact, with the AfD now Germany’s largest opposition party, these deportations could well expand to target Syrians as well: Of the 890,000-plus asylum seekers who began arriving in Germany in 2015, the majority were from Syria, and Syrians have become symbolic of the entire refugee debate. According to the country’s Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, Germany has received 476,331 Syrian asylum requests since 2015. Of those, 301,201 were granted refugee status.

As the mood in the country shifted, however, the German state began offering subsidiary protection, a temporary status where an asylum seeker does not qualify for full refugee protection but cannot be sent back immediately. Those who are granted subsidiary protection receive a residence permit that has to be renewed annually. In 2015, only 61 Syrians received subsidiary protection; in 2016 the number jumped to 121,562. Only 300 Syrian asylum seekers have been denied protection entirely, and the deportation of Syrians has been delayed until this year.

Before taking any further steps to deport Syrian asylum seekers, the German government will almost certainly have to make the case that those being deported—whether individuals or whole groups—have had their applications for asylum rejected because they are not personally in danger in their home country. A group of AfD lawmakers made headlines earlier this month after they traveled through Syria to prove the country was indeed safe enough to send refugees back.

Syrian Isn’t Safe

It is crucial to understand, however, that this is not true: Syrians who return, men in particular, are in deadly danger from both the continued military operations of the Assad regime and the vast scale of destruction the country has experienced. The war in Syria is winding down in most areas but heating up in the remaining rebel enclaves. Even if intense bombardment ceases in the next year or two as planned, it will take much longer to rebuild basic infrastructure, not to mention provide education and jobs.

And Syrian men who fled to avoid being drafted into Assad’s army are at risk as long as the regime is in power. These men opted to leave Syria rather than shoot their own countrymen, and now they are caught between a rock and a hard place—they have become a lightning rod in Europe, with right-wing politicians blaming young, male asylum seekers for increases in crime and sexual violence; having left, however, they are unable to return.

In refugee camps in Lebanon and Turkey and shelters in Berlin, male refugees between 18 and 34 say they fear the regime will arrest them, or even execute them, if they return. Most of the Afghans deported thus far are men, and activists believe Syrian men would be the first deported as well. Belinda Bartolucci, a legal policy adviser with Pro Asyl, a German non-profit that supports refugees and asylum seekers, echoes these concerns: “It is to be feared that in the future Germany will use this concept again for other countries.”

Pro Asyl is making a legal case against the deportations, reminding authorities that asylum seekers have several recourses available even after their applications are rejected. In fact, they say it is nearly impossible to bypass all of those recourses and deport a Syrian asylum seeker. German law states, for example, that a refugee cannot be deported if that would entail an immediate risk to their safety. In early January, a German-born Salafist who is a Turkish national appealed his deportation, saying that he would be tortured by Turkish authorities if he returned– and Germany’s highest court ruled in his favor. This effectively forces the German government to obtain a guarantee from an asylum seeker’s country of origin that they will not be tortured upon arrival, a high hurdle to clear.

The Assad regime will almost certainly not produce such an assurance for Syrian men. Since it is now expected that Bashar al-Assad will remain in power, European nations will need to make this an issue in international fora if they wish to begin reducing the number of rejected asylum seekers remaining in the EU; some Syrian men may even be willing to return on their own if they know they can safely do so.

Starting Aid

One option may be through a loophole in Syria’s draft law that allows draft dodgers to return if they have lived abroad for four years and can pay a fine of $4,000. Germany’s interior ministry has recently been trying to lure Syrians to return under their own volition in exchange for a payout of €1,000 for individuals and €3,000 for families in a scheme called Starthilfe, or starting aid. If Germany—or other European states—reworked this idea to target the needs of Syrian men who fled army service, it could be promising.

Syrians who fear oppression at the hands of their own government cannot return, and they cannot be sent back either if their lives would be in danger—not just for their own sake, but for the sake of the values that have defined modern Germany in the post-war era. Those who are willing to return if their safety is secured should be supported, with financial means if necessary; those who would not be safe in their home country must not be forced to return to it.

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© Artwork: Arnaud Dechiron

Welcome! The EU-Turkey agreement reached last year helped stem the flow of refugees arriving in Europe through Greece. Now, however, attention is shifting to Italy, where people – both refugees and economic migrants – are still arriving in unsustainable numbers, straining local and European capacities. What should be done to address this new crisis?
Gerald Knaus: It’s a great pleasure to be here to talk about the issue with people from think tanks, as well as members of parliament. I know Italy has a lot of experience in dealing with the issue, and it’s very good at implementing what politicians decide when it comes to reception permissions and implementing new ideas of asylum. The key problem in a lot of debates of practical policy issues is that they become overly ideological rather than practical. Of course, ideology and laws matter – but we run into problems if we can’t implement what we discuss.
A few numbers regarding this EU-Turkey agreement might be helpful. For the five months this year up to May, fewer than fifty people per day came from Turkey to Greece. If this trend continues, this year will see the fewest people going from Turkey to Greece in the past ten years. And it will also mean that this year will have the lowest number of people drowning. There are many things to criticize, but it’s still a big accomplishment. The outlying year of 2015 had more than 880,000 people arriving from Turkey; this year it dropped to 18,000.
Italy also has strong fluctuations, but there’s been a steady rise from high levels in 2014. This year will be a record year. Last year it had 181,000, and the first months of this year have already seen more people than the two previous years. So we have now a completely reversed situation: a sharp decline in the Aegean and big rise in the central Mediterranean.
Every day, twelve people drown in the central Mediterranean, and this trend is continuing. In contrast, the 434 deaths in 2016 in the Aegean were almost all within the first three months before the Turkey deal. People have to be saved from drowning at sea and be brought to Italy.
There also different groups coming to Greece and Italy. In Italy there are almost no Syrians, but rather Africans, the vast majority West Africans. This is interesting, because the recognition rates for Africans are very low. Most of them are not refugees. There are some refugees from Nigeria and Congo, but they are not the ones who come to Italy. The vast majority of them do not get protection – the recognition rate is between 1 to 3 percent.
The problem is that even when they’re rejected, they never return. Once they’re in Europe, they will stay for years regardless of what happens in their application procedure. This is not a problem for Italy only, but also for many other European countries including France and Germany, the Baltic countries, and Sweden. Sweden had 180,000 people arrive in 2015.
In order to return people quickly we need two things: we need fast and accurate asylum recognition and application procedures, and we need the countries’ willingness to take people back. This leads to what we call Day X for return. And this was the secret of the Turkey agreement. The Turkish parties came to Chancellor Merkel and promised to take care of everyone who arrived in Greece after March 18, 2016. Those who arrived before, Germany would take. That’s the key point. We should not underestimate the fact that the financial crisis, poverty, and the extreme challenge of taking in so many refugees created uncertainty and fear. Of course, some politicians take advantage of these feelings and if we try to explain this passion, I’m not sure it is passion for Brexit or for these politics themselves – I think it is a more instinctive reaction to the fear they feel, to the easy promises they’re hearing. It is a movement against a system that does not seem to function as it once did; it cannot fulfill the promises it has made. And we should also talk about why the existing system – at least in the Western world – does not function for people anymore.
Andreas Nick: I agree, the EU-Turkey deal has been successful. It rests on three pillars: better border protection, financial support for Turkey, and legal assistance for Syrians upon reception. A lot of these mechanisms also translate to other situations. Going to countries of origin to forge agreements is very important.
There are three key elements: The first is to differentiate between asylum seekers, refugees, and migrants who come in search of better economic opportunities. The fact that so many asylum seekers remain in Europe is an enormous pull factor for many others who come despite the horrible dangers of such a undertaking. That should be ended, for humanitarian reasons. The second element is good decision making for migrants that have arrived. The third element is incentive structures for all relevant countries, on a national as well as regional basis. A strong message should be sent that if you’re returned after applying for asylum, you’re not eligible to apply as an “economic migrant” to any other EU country.
There are many differences between Turkey and Italy. Refugees from the Syrian civil war just want to get away from the war and usually intend to return. Therefore, we have to deal with a temporary phenomenon. When it comes to migrants from Africa via the Mediterranean we have to deal with a long-term issue that cannot be solved within a short period of time.
The long-term rescue missions in the Mediterranean need to be combined with quick decision-making once people arrive, along with working with governments of their countries of origin. If the message is that once you make it to Sicily or Malta you are safe to stay, the problem will never be solved.

Nadan, you’ve had quite a lot of experience with how Italy deals with this issue. Can a distinction be made between refugees and migrants?
Nadan Petrovic: Theoretically there are refugees as defined in the Geneva Convention. And there are economic migrants. But now the situation is more complicated as we have encountered unforeseen situations. For example, we’ve had unaccompanied minors from Somalia being sent by the government, which is a very unique phenomenon. The government knows that they will not be rejected, so these young boys and girls go on an often month-long journey across the desert until often after encountering horrible violence they finally arrive in Europe. What are we to do with a group like that?
As different as the nationalities of the migrants are, these states share common characteristics: They are all inherently unstable. Some of them are failed states, like Libya; some of them are precarious states; and some of them are very authoritarian states like Egypt. And most of them have very weak or opaque government structures. In terms of speaking with countries of origin for example, Libya – who do you talk to? The question is how to strengthen the structures of those states to make sure people can be sent back to them. With the Turkey deal, nothing changed in Syria – the causes have not been addressed. But Turkey can take back people. Can we see this in Africa?
Knaus: I think it’s very important to recognize that the number of people who arrived over the past four or five years is exceptionally high. This is because the route has been developed, and there are hundreds of millions of euros being earned. And if you look at Nigeria, most migrants come from southern Nigeria, from peaceful cities – and most of them are women who are trafficked to Italy as prostitutes with huge profits for the traffickers.
We can thus recognize 1 percent of these migrants. If people are arriving in an orderly way and know where they are, the situation will be better. But now, people are dying on the way in the desert, at sea, and they arrive without any status. Then they stay for years, exploitable underground. In Italy there’s a campaign now to regularize the 500,000 people that are already in the country who will not leave but have no status. Politically, regularizing them is the only rational thing to do.

Andreas, even with some kind of Marshall Plan to develop the countries of origin, people will come anyway. Don’t we have to communicate to their countries of origin – as well into some of Europe’s more conservative parties, including your own – that we need to have a proper immigration law? That we need to take people in, in an orderly way, in order to get irregular migration under control?
Nick: I do think these things are interrelated. Both to communicate to a broader electorate and also to make it vertically possible to negotiate. Creating a very strong disincentive for people to come to Europe, for example, is a consensus among both the center left and center right.
Knaus: Just one more point on the importance of having a controled process: If you want to be politically successful, looking at Sweden and Germany, you need to really help refugees. There are massive networks of NGOs, civil society organizations, and help organizations, and you need to mobilize them. What people will not accept is a sense of loss of control. And loss of control means you do not know who is coming in. If one in a million commits an act of terror, people suddenly think the others could do it too.
Another point is that it’s not really fair. So Italy will need to reduce crime and also educate people about the need to accept migrants. Europe will have to stand up for resettlement. I’ve had three years of debate all around Europe about this. If we want to create an open Europe that accepts refugees as well as economic migrants, we must have control of our borders. And the only way to do so, and amazingly it’s lacking today, is to take countries we need to cooperate with seriously, and think in terms of their interests. In the case of Turkey, it sees that it can benefit from the deal: It can get financial support, and will need fewer border controls because the flow of people will decrease.
This discussion is never public. We talk about financial aid and legal access, but never in specifics. We need to work on a single-page statement with the same format with Senegal and other African countries, which has four commitments: First, that we [the African countries] take back our citizens and help take back our citizens from day X. Second, the EU commits for the next five years to take 10,000 or 15,000 refugees from Nigeria and 10,000 people from Senegal every year. Third, we provide support in those countries to help refugees, and fourth, we do receptions through UNHCR. Everybody can see if each side has done its part and lived up to its commitments.
If we keep having incomprehensible conferences and compacts and summits, this situation will continue and people will keep drowning.

You’re talking about a pretty dramatic shift in attitudes here: no more summits, no more thousand-page-agreements, etc. In a situation like this where we want to keep migration, how likely is it that the EU can consolidate in a straightforward way – or is it more likely that we will see a coalition of the willing? 
Nick: Looking at the debate over the past few years, we see there are many differences among countries. But we have also seen cooperation, for example, in the development fund. If the crisis in Italy continues, it will reach a different dimension. This is not only German policy and Merkel’s migration policy. Right now is the time for countries to cooperate to strengthen the single market and jointly manage the common border. This is a crisis that can affect our common economic success and welfare. If we get that message across, hopefully we can better solve the problem.

Nadan, do you want to comment on this? What should be done to help those countries that need to change?
Petrovic: My impression, at least from my experiences in Italy, is that political elites are not very clear who is who. But I want to explain very clearly that refugees also have full rights. There’s a need to separate different kinds of migrants. When states have the capacity to decide whether or not they need migrants, most of them decide that they do need them. But the reality is that they don’t want to say it clearly, and now people are coming in without invitation. I want to insist that a well-functioning migration policy is better than a refugee policy. In the Italian example, there is a temporary permission status for migrants from Bosnia, Kosovo, or Moldova. They have temporary permission to stay, and then have the opportunity to turn that into work permission or asylum status. Very few of them apply for asylum because they’re okay with temporary permission and labor status. For a long while, we’ve underestimated the problem.

As did the rest of Europe.
Petrovic: Yes, for sure. But compared with other countries on the southern border such as Malta and Greece, Italy is a strange case.
I’ll tell you a personal story. When I was an adviser to the department of migration ten years ago, there was a possibility of reallocation proceedings within the European Refugee Fund. I asked them ten years ago, why shouldn’t we propose sending people from Italy elsewhere? They said that we’re Italy, a small country, sixty million people, how can we let the EU take some of our refugees? And now we’re asking for this.
The EU has given numerous rules on this issue, but its policy cannot be improved because one rule is more important than the others – the Dublin rule. All the other successes that have been achieved, the steps toward standardization, have not benefited us that much because the Dublin rule is more important than any other.

But how do you propose we skip Dublin and alleviate the situation for countries such as Italy?
Knaus: It all seems very complicated, but it’s actually very simple. In theory, everyone should apply for asylum when they cross the border. But in practice, for more than twenty years, it has never worked. Just last year, Germany requested tens of thousands of people be sent to other countries because it’s not a border country, so of course they entered from elsewhere, and Germany ended up sending 4,000 people over 2016 to other EU member states. Tens of thousands of asylum seekers, in comparison, have remained in Germany with their status unknown. It makes no sense. Germany only sent 4,000 people to other countries, but it received 20,000 from Sweden and other countries. So Germany didn’t benefit at all. But Italy didn’t benefit or pay a cost either. Italy received 2,000 people over the last year, and it also sent 2,000 people to other countries. So the net is zero.
But these are real people waiting. Civil servants are creating files. We have this bureaucratic monster which serves no purpose at all. So here is the problem. The governments cannot get up and say to the public that our system never worked, we could not afford it, we do nothing. We need to do something.
This is why I think the only way to get a system to work is to be honest. We do not know how to move around such large numbers of people between Italy and Switzerland, Sweden and Hungary, and between Europe and Nigeria. We need to minimize the movement of people as much as possible. The asylum application should be Europeanized. What Italy needs to do is to be able to present a proposal. What Italians need to say to the Germans, essentially, is that we want to have an asylum processing procedure in Italy as fast as the Dutch do. The Dutch resolved and closed cases in six weeks. And those cases have a high degree of quality because they have high quality legal aid, high quality translators, and decent country reports. Of course, Italians shouldn’t do this alone. So the ministers in Italy want this project in Sicily, agreements with Nigeria to take people back, European support for reception and asylum – and the vision is to replace Southern country borders with European borders. Relocation from there and return from there. It requires a lot of work, but it’s the only option – we need more Amsterdam in Sicily.
Today there is a debate about governance reform in Brussels. For the past two years it has been a complete disaster because nothing has been solved. And in the autumn, people will say the reform isn’t working and we are helpless.

Do you see a few countries taking the lead, or is it more of an EU cooperation?
Knaus: One thing is clear: The Turkey deal would never have come through if it had waited for the EU 28. It was essentially a coalition of the willing that consisted of two countries: the Netherlands and Germany. Now we need a few more countries: Italy, Germany, Sweden, and perhaps France – this crew, if they can negotiate together with Nigeria, if they can present this plan together of replacing Dublin. Germany make take the lead – but Italy still has to propose it.

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© REUTERS/Alkis Konstantinidis

It was an agreement that the European Union, and Germany in particular, hailed as the key to solving the refugee crisis: the EU would give Turkey a total of 6 billion euros and visa-free travel for its citizens, in return for Ankara blocking refugees or migrants attempting to cross into Greece from its territory.

The reality has been different: Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has used the pact as his personal bargaining chip over his EU counterparts. His threats to scrap the deal were originally leverage in securing visa waivers for Turkish citizens traveling in the EU. Now, however, the rhetoric has grown increasingly dramatic and the threats more menacing, after EU countries Germany and the Netherlands, in the run-up to Turkey’s constitutional referendum in April, banned some pro-Erdogan rallies by Turkish ministers on their soil.

In the eyes of EU bureaucrats, the agreement is still a success story. In fact, over the past few months the EU representatives who helped compose the agreement have been touring across Greece, patting themselves on the back over how well their plan has worked. They are still vowing to speed up the asylum decision process significantly.

They do indeed have some reason to be satisfied. Only around 30 people a day have been arriving on the Greek islands so far this year, a significant drop from 2015, where an average of 2,200 people arrived on a daily basis. Turkey has also agreed that migrants who make it to the Greek islands but whose asylum applications had been rejected would be readmitted back into Turkey.

But because of the agreement, some 14,000 unlucky refugees who have arrived in Greece since the deal went into effect have been stuck in a seemingly eternal limbo: They are essentially kept as prisoners on the Greek islands until their asylum cases are processed. And despite the 600 million euros the EU earmarked for the UNHCR, NGOs, and the Greek government to rectify the situation, hundreds of people are still living in summer tents.

Amnesty International and other human rights organizations have called the migration agreement illegal and inhumane, violating both EU and Greek laws. Doctors Without Borders psychologists in Lesbos saw the number of patients with symptoms of anxiety and depression more than double, and they also witnessed more cases of self-harm and attempted suicide.

Three refugees in the Moria camp burned coal in their tents in an effort to warm up last January; it had been snowing and raining non-stop for days. They were poisoned by the carbon monoxide.

Official reports also conclude that some asylum-seekers have been sent back to Turkey without a chance to apply for asylum in Greece. The Greek authorities were under immense pressure to implement the terms of the agreement successfully, and these reports indicate that many people were deported without due process.

Even Syrian refugees have found themselves in jail and awaiting deportation to Turkey, despite appeals. The country’s highest court will soon hear the case of a 21-year-old Syrian man held in the Lesbos jail, and much is at stake. If the man is returned to Turkey, it is quite likely that he would then be deported back to Syria.

A Safe Country?

In addition to these issues, the EU has failed to answer a question central to the deal: Is Turkey really a safe third country? After all, last year was one of Turkey’s most turbulent: 30 terror attacks, an attempted coup by parts of the military, a crackdown on Kurds, and active participation in the Syria war.

Until now, some 1,000 migrants and refugees have been deported back to Turkey, and that number is considered too low for EU bureaucrats – they are looking for ways to increase it. They found the solution: those waiting for a decision on appeals will be held in detention centers, and another 200 Greek police officers will be transferred to the islands. The goal is to limit the number of asylum-seekers fleeing to the mainland to continue their journey. In addition, more EU border officers will be stationed in the Macedonian and the Albanian borders, to prevent smuggling across the Western route.

Greece’s next move will be to change the law to recognize Turkey as a “safe” country also for vulnerable groups; the Ministry of Migration is preparing corresponding legislation. If it passes, even families with children, religious minorities, disabled, LGBT, and torture victims, won’t be protected by the Greek law anymore and will be deported to Turkey.

There is a wildcard that the EU appeared to have misjudged: Erdogan’s penchant for power and his geopolitical strategies were not taken into consideration when the deal was signed. Turkey’s deteriorating relations with European countries have put the EU in a seemingly untenable position, and critics argue the balance of power rests clearly with Ankara. Yet Erdogan’s government has been threatening to abandon the agreement and open the floodgates for a year and has not followed through – despite several ultimatums, and the fact that Turkish citizens still don’t have visa-free travel within Europe. It seems Ankara has a stake in seeing the agreement succeed, as well.

Still, if Turkey makes good on its threats, Greece will once again find itself with thousands of new arrivals, only they will not be allowed to continue on to Western Europe and will be stuck in Greece. And if this scenario plays out, Brussels will likely hastily throw more millions to cash-strapped, crisis-ridden Greece and conveniently believe they have solved the issue once more. But more money will not help.

As of last December, the EU had only resettled some 6,200 of the over 62,000 refugees stuck in Greece. That has weakened European officials’ credibility and raised anger in Athens.

And what’s more, the EU cannot seem to see the forest through the trees: Brussels has failed to address the problem of migration at its very root. War, conflict, and extreme poverty still face millions in Turkey and their home countries, and the reasons to flee are not subsiding. The European dream is still a shining beacon for many, and it should not come as a  surprise that at any moment, the number of people looking for a better life will increase. It’s time Europe stops buying into the far-right’s fear-mongering ways and bowing to populist pressure. Building an iron curtain around the continent isn’t a solution, and history shows that migration ends up being a benefit, not a burden.

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© REUTERS/Antonio Parrinello

If Europe’s current refugee and migration crisis has made anything clear over the past two years, it is this: the European Union urgently needs a credible, effective policy on asylum and border management that respects existing international and EU refugee law and controls external land and sea borders. It must treat asylum seekers respectfully while deterring irregular migration and undermining the business model of smugglers; it must save lives and respect the fundamental ethical norm of the rule of rescue, not push individuals in need into danger, which is at the heart of the UN Refugee Convention (and its key article 33 on no pushbacks).

The EU-Turkey agreement on refugees in the Aegean adopted on March 18, 2016, contains the elements of such a policy – but to serve as a good model it has to be fully implemented. The agreement is based on existing EU laws on asylum and on the principles of the UN Refugee Convention. It commits the EU to helping improve conditions for refugees in Turkey (the country in the world hosting the largest number of refugees today) with the most generous contribution the EU has ever made for refugees in any country in the world. It also makes improving the work and quality of the Turkish asylum service a matter of direct interest to the EU: only if Turkey has a functioning asylum system can it be considered a safe third country. Finally and crucially, it foresees substantial resettlement of refugees in an orderly manner from Turkey once flows of irregular arrivals in the Aegean are reduced. The fact that this last provision has not yet been implemented seriously does not make it any less important to the overall logic of the agreement.

Even without full implementation, the agreement has produced a dramatic and immediate impact on refugee movements in the eastern Mediterranean. Crossings in the Aegean Sea fell from 115,000 in the first two months of the year to 3,300 in June and July. The number of people who drowned in the Aegean fell from 366 people in the first three months of the year to seven between May and July. This was achieved without pushing refugees to take other, more dangerous routes (the people arriving in Southern Italy this year were from African countries). And there have not been any mass expulsions from Greece either, something NGOs had feared would happen. In fact, more people had been sent back from Greece to Turkey in the three months preceding the agreement (967) than in the ten months since it was concluded (777).

It is obvious, however, that the EU has no current plan or credible strategy for the central Mediterranean, and this presents a huge risk. The status quo is clearly unacceptable from a humanitarian point of view: in 2016 an unprecedented number of people (more than 4400) drowned there. It is also politically explosive, lending ammunition to those on the far-right across Europe (from Geert Wilders in the Netherlands to Marine Le Pen in France and the Alternative für Deutschland in Germany). They argue that the only way to control migration to Europe is by abolishing the Schengen open borders regime and restoring border controls within the European Union. The lack of a coherent EU strategy has led some to suggest looking to Australia for inspiration, praising a model whereby anyone reaching the EU by sea should be denied the right to even apply for asylum in the EU and be returned to North Africa. This would amount to the EU turning its back on the Refugee Convention, initiating an existential crisis for the UNHCR and global policy on asylum.

A humane and effective border and asylum policy is indeed possible, and it does not involve emulating the Australian model. The first step requires implementing the EU-Turkey agreement in full. The second step would involve applying the right lessons to the central Mediterranean as well. Both would require the EU to set up new structures, including credible EU asylum missions and instruments to resettle refugees, among others. Both depend on Greece and Italy persuading other EU countries that the challenge they face is a European one requiring innovative European solutions.

Following Through

Nearly a year after it was signed into action, the EU-Turkey agreement remains at risk – and that despite its successes so far. This is because of inadequate implementation.

On average, fewer than one hundred people have been returned to Turkey each month; many people who arrived on the Aegean islands have remained struck there in limbo for extended periods of time, while the number of new arrivals has been some one hundred a day on average in recent months.

All this creates a realistic scenario for failure. Greek authorities, under pressure and without an answer for islanders who see Lesbos and Chios becoming a European Nauru (the Pacific island where Australia sends people who arrive by boat), might move larger numbers of people from the Aegean islands to the mainland. That would again lead to rising numbers of people crossing the Aegean. Once larger groups are moved to the Greek mainland, the humanitarian situation for refugees there, which is already bad, will deteriorate further. We would see the populist-led calls to build a stronger wall north of Greece multiply.

Already now, the number one topic of conversation among migrants stranded on the Greek mainland is the cost of getting smuggled across the Balkan route, either via Macedonia or Bulgaria. It is hard to imagine Greece making a major effort to stop people from leaving the country if Greeks feel the EU has abandoned them. The weak Macedonian reception and asylum system might then collapse within weeks, once more people cross the border. The western Balkans would turn into a battleground for migrants, smugglers, border guards, soldiers, and vigilante groups, destabilizing an already fragile region.

If this scenario played out, it would be a serious blow to European leaders like Angela Merkel, who argue that it is possible to have a humane and effective EU policy on border management while respecting the Refugee Convention. It would also be a blow to already tense EU-Turkish relations. What is needed now is the right implementation strategy.

The EU should appoint a special representative for the implementation of the EU-Turkey agreement – a former prime minister or former foreign minister with the experience and authority to address urgent implementation issues on the ground. To preserve the agreement, the European Commission and Turkey should address all concerns raised about Turkey as a safe third country for those who should be returned from Greece. Such concerns can be addressed. As the UNHCR noted on March 18, 2016, everything depends on serious implementation:

“People being returned to Turkey and needing international protection must have a fair and proper determination of their claims, and within a reasonable time. Assurances against refoulement, or forced return, must be in place. Reception and other arrangements need to be readied in Turkey before anyone is returned from Greece. People determined to be needing international protection need to be able to enjoy asylum, without discrimination, in accordance with accepted international standards, including effective access to work, health care, education for children, and, as necessary, social assistance.”

Turkey would need to present a concrete proposal on how to ensure – and how to make transparent – that it is fulfilling the conditions set by EU law to be a credible safe third country for refugees of any origin that Greece might return, whether they are Pakistani, Afghan, or Syrian. It would need to guarantee – with more assistance from the EU and UNCHR, if necessary – that there are sufficient asylum case workers, translators, and legal aid in place to provide an efficient asylum process. There would need to be full transparency surrounding what is happening to each and every person returned as well. Given the small number of people concerned, this is all doable.

At the same time, the EU should send a European asylum mission to the Greek islands, including at least two hundred case workers able to make binding decisions on asylum claims (which would require an invitation by the Greek government, changes in Greek law, and assurances that any decision made by such a mission could be suspended by a chief Greek legal officer). Those who are granted protection should then be relocated across the EU immediately; all others would be sent back to Turkey. The principle behind an EU mission would be obvious: In times of crisis, there is a need for a substantial number of case workers, interpreters, and reception officers to ensure quality standards for assessing protection requests with speed where most asylum requests are submitted. It would be unfair to blame Greece or any other country for being unable to deal rapidly with asylum requests of the tens of thousands of people; it would be unreasonable for Greece not to ask for such a European mission. Ultimately it is a matter of political will on the part of the EU and Turkey to deal with the few thousand asylum seekers now on the Aegean islands, in line with international norms and EU directives for their mutual benefit.

Adapting the Agreement

So far it has proven difficult to send a sufficient number of EU asylum caseworkers to Greece. At the same time, there are still no decent reception conditions for the relatively small number of people who have arrived on the islands since April 2016. These challenges cast serious doubt on proposals to slow illegal migration to Italy by setting up reception centers somewhere in North Africa; as some EU politicians have suggested, everyone who reaches Italy would be taken to these centers to have their asylum claims processed. This is sometimes presented as a model inspired by Australia, which puts everyone who arrives by sea in camps on the Pacific island of Nauru or on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea. In fact, asylum seekers held in Nauru in recent years have been forced to wait many years for their applications to be decided.

Conditions of detention were and remain intentionally harsh to deter further arrivals. And once asylum is granted, it remains unclear where refugees might go (recently the US offered to help out and promised to accept a large number of people moved to these islands by Australia; it remains unclear whether this will actually happen). It is important to note that Nauru never hosted more than a thousand people at any given time. The notion that the EU might outsource the detention of tens of thousands of asylum seekers to camps across North Africa for long periods and under similar conditions is surely a recipe for failure.

So how might the EU reduce the number of arrivals – and deaths – in the central Mediterranean? The key lies in fast processing of asylum applications for anyone who arrives, and in fast returns of those whose claims are rejected to their countries of origin. Both of these tasks should become European responsibilities. Anyone not granted asylum should be returned to his or her country of origin. Prioritizing such returns should become the central issue of negotiations with African countries of origin. On the other hand, those who are granted asylum should be relocated across the EU to support Italy and Greece and replace the inadequate Dublin system (the notion that Dutch or German case officers would decide which refugees remain in Greece or Italy would obviously not be acceptable to these countries).

What would be the likely impact of such a policy on arrivals? It is very likely that these would fall sharply.

Nigerians were the largest group of arrivals in 2016, and the majority would be unlikely to risk their lives crossing the deadly Sahara, unstable Libya, and the central Mediterranean, and spending thousands of Euros on smugglers when the likelihood of being returned to Nigeria would be upwards of seventy percent (which is the current rate of rejection of Nigerian asylum applications in the EU).

As noted, ensuring that Nigeria, Senegal and other countries take back their nationals arriving in Italy after an agreed date should be the chief priority in talks between the EU and Nigeria – similar to the commitment Turkey made to take back without delay people who arriving in Greece after March 20, 2016. This would require that an EU asylum mission in Italy is able to process all claims within weeks. Rapid readmission would bring down the number of people who stay in the EU after their applications are rejected. In this way, the number of irregular arrivals becomes manageable – with less business for smugglers and far fewer deaths at sea. The aim might be to reduce the number of all irregular arrivals by sea to below 100,000 (for an EU of over 500 million people) in 2017. Such a goal is realistic: It is, after all, the average number of irregular arrivals into the entire EU 2009-13.

European leaders could thus demonstrate to their electorates that it is possible to control external sea borders without undermining the refugee convention or treating those who arrive inhumanely to deter new arrivals. European leaders should simultaneously push forward the global debate on orderly transfers of refugees through resettlement. The only way to do so is to lead by example, building up EU capacity for resettlement as well boosting the UNHCR’s capacity to do more. Coalitions of willing EU states should commit to resettle a significant number of vulnerable refugees each year.

In recent decades, resettlement has never reached more than 100,000 a year across the planet, and of these the US took the lion’s share. Until now European states have not built up the bureaucratic machinery for large-scale resettlement. For this reason, pushing the EU to fully implement the resettlement provisions in the Aegean agreement (point 4) is vital and deserves to be an advocacy priority for human rights NGOs and refugee rights defenders.

In the face of rising anti-refugee sentiment across the world, it will take a strong coalition of countries to protect the Refugee Convention. Such a coalition requires governments that are able to win elections on the platform that a humane asylum policy and effective border control can be combined and can even reinforce each other. Such a policy needs to be based on core principles: no pushbacks; no Nauru; discouraging irregular passage through fast readmission and fast asylum processes; expansion of refugee resettlement programs; and serious financial help to host countries elsewhere. If this happens, lessons from the EU agreement with Turkey – the only plan in recent years that dramatically reduced the numbers of people arriving without changing EU refugee law – might help develop a blueprint for protecting refugee rights in an age of anxiety. For Europe and refugees, the stakes could not be higher.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – January/February 2017 issue.

The post A Two-Step Solution appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Giorgos Moutafis

Burns cover the face and body of nine-year-old Amina. They’re from when a bomb fell on her house in Aleppo, Syria. Leila, 10, still has nightmares of Islamic State fighters entering her Yazidi village in Sinjar in Northern Iraq. Busra, 16, has tried to commit suicide twice already. She can’t stand living in a camp on this Greek island anymore. She misses her brother back in Syria.

The three girls don’t know each other, but they have something in common – they live in fear of being deported. And they are living in limbo.

Along with their families, the girls are among the more than 21,000 people that arrived to Lesbos after March 2015, when the European Union and Ankara sealed a deal to send migrants back to Turkey, preventing them from traveling onward to the mainland or Western Europe.

According to the conditions of the EU-Turkey deal, the European Union will have to give Turkey another 3 billion euros on top of the 3 billion originally agreed – money to be spent on improving refugees’ living conditions in the country. The pact also involved a complex exchange agreement: For every Syrian refugee sent back to Turkey from the Greek islands, another Syrian refugee will be resettled directly from Turkey to an EU country. In return, the EU would liberalize visa requirements for Turkish nationals.

Nine months later, both sides have struggled to stick to the deal.

The influx of migrants has indeed slowed considerably compared to 2015. Last month, 2,000 migrants arrived on all of the Greek islands, around a third less than the previous two months. In November 2015, around 100,000 people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa and elsewhere arrived.

But thousands keep arriving in Greece. Most didn’t have a choice, as half of their families were already in Europe. And others were so destitute that they took the chance anyway. In the camps, many – like Amina, the nine-year-old burn victim – need serious medical attention. According to the UNHCR’s latest data, only a small fraction of the refugees living in Turkey has actually been relocated to Europe – just 4,000 so far.

Is Turkey “Safe”?

It’s difficult to consider Turkey a “safe country,” either. Its asylum-system is barely three years old, and its infrastructure cannot serve three million refugees. Turkey still denies full refugee status to non-Europeans. And the failed coup six months ago has led to a sweeping crackdown and a purge, with thousands arrested, fired and persecuted. The EU Parliament recently voted to freeze Turkey’s EU accession talks “due to concerns about the human rights violations.” The vote was non-binding, but it sent a clear signal to Ankara.

It’s another sign that discourse between the EU and Turkey has turned sour. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to threaten to tear up the deal and send three million migrants streaming toward the Greek islands if the EU doesn’t pay the rest of the 6 billion euros it promised, and if visa-free travel isn’t granted soon.

But even with the six billion euros, refugees’ living conditions in Turkey are still difficult. Those who make it out of camps face discrimination, high rents, and low-paid jobs. For them, Europe still seems like the only viable choice on the horizon.

Meanwhile, the number of asylum-seekers in the region keeps increasing. Turkey is already hosting more than three million refugees. With the help of Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been destroying the rebel stronghold of East Aleppo. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban’s power has been growing. Libya is in chaos. Egypt’s economy is teetering on the brink of collapse, too, raising the possibility of the Arab world’s most populous state becoming a new source of refugees.

Stricter controls in the Balkans have shut down the main route for migrants. But the number of those now trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean and Italy, a much deadlier route, has been rising. Conditions in various African countries are deteriorating quickly, spurring a new wave of migrants.

So far, only 754 asylum-seekers have been deported to Turkey. Human rights organizations like Amnesty International and UNHCR interviewed deportees after they arrived to Turkey and found that many weren’t even allowed by the Greek authorities to apply for asylum. The media recently highlighted the cases of two men, a homosexual Syrian and a Christian Syrian likely to face persecution in the Middle East, who were scheduled for deportation to Turkey.

More EU Help Needed

Greece is struggling under the weight of a massive backlog of asylum cases, and also under EU pressure to increase deportations. Asylum cases are taking far too long to process. Greek immigration agencies are understaffed and overworked: Only 700 people are working on asylum applications that require days of interviews, investigations and paperwork. The cash-strapped Greek government can’t hire more asylum application processors, either, due to the conditions on the international loans that are keeping the country afloat.

The backlog has now reached around 60,000 applications, not including the appeals of asylums seekers whose applications are rejected. The Greek Ministry of Immigration has asked for EU help, and Brussels promised 400 staffers. But only 36 have arrived so far. The Belgian staff left two weeks ago, fearing for their safety after shots were fired in one of the refugee camps.

Amid the turmoil, refugees are growing increasingly restive. Around 40,000 are living in tents as the rainy days and cold nights of the Greek winter approach. Last week on Lesbos, an Iraqi woman and a child from Iraq died after their gas canister used for cooking and heat exploded.

People on Lesbos often cite a Greek proverb when they hear their leaders claiming the EU’s deal with Turkey is solving the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War: it’s like hiding the dust under the carpet.

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European migration policy has been roundly criticized lately 
for being too illiberal. While this is unfair, there is room for improve-
ment in the EUʼs dealing with refugees and migrants.

© picture alliance/empics/Steve Parsons

This March, the EU agreed to a deal with Turkey under which Ankara takes back refugees from the Greek islands and better regulates their onward movement to Europe. Commentators wrote it off as pointless, saying Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans would simply be pushed to a far more dangerous path to the EU via Libya. There has indeed been a rise in the numbers coming through Libya, but the reality is more complex. Syrians, Iraqis, and Afghans are just a trace element there, while the biggest numbers come from across Africa.

The sheer range of nationalities passing though Libya is just the latest sign that something systemic is wrong in the world. Only half of all asylum seekers to the EU last year came from Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Nigeria was the number one source country for Italy; Sudan for France; Eritrea for the UK; and Russia for Poland. One analyst counted more than a hundred nationalities registered in Lesbos last year.

This exodus constitutes a souring of globalization and poses a challenge to the liberal Western order. In 1991, when barriers and buffers collapsed, mass migration threatened to overwhelm fragile state-building processes from Eastern Europe to Africa. Western states took a gamble, using trade and capital flows to give people reasons to stay home. This promise of equitable global development has now seemingly run its course.

The West’s attempt to create a massive crossborder economy was always going to be hard to combine with national state-building. Many liberals were naive to believe that international trade and investment would automatically spread democracy and its institutions. With their plans now in tatters, it is time for a rethink on European migration policy.

The Need to Intervene

In the refugee debate, Europe’s voters and politicians are putting their fears before reason. In the case of liberals, they see all border measures as unjust and EU overseas interventions as “burden-shifting.” Europe as “the lone beacon of liberalism” is just the other side of the coin of “Fortress Europe.” Both ideas reflect pessimism about the EU’s ability to positively influence the chaos beyond its borders.

What drives liberals to test the EU’s moral credentials by making it stand as a beacon in a collapsing international order? It comes down to a reluctance to tackle the root causes of migration: the West has a poor recent track record of state-building, and interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya seem nothing short of hubris in hindsight. These interventions have certainly contributed to the refugee crisis.

Policies to address the causes of irregular migration – interventions, trade, aid – may have been flawed and messy, but they were also necessary. Moreover, the EU’s approach of managing migration from its neighbors was essentially constructive. The EU has tried to build up neighboring countries and regions, then gradually reduce barriers with them. That is what the EU was doing when it enlarged eastwards or removed visa restrictions for the Western Balkans.

Starting from the Bottom Up

Happily, the overseas interventions required to address migration do not involve classic state-building. Certainly saving Libya or Syria feature on the EU’s agenda. But what is required to manage migration is an effort at the micro-level. Take the people-smuggling networks across the EU’s neighborhood. We talk about “king pins” and “crime bosses.” But the networks are in fact mostly run by individuals making a quick buck. If only it were a case of eliminating “Mr. Big.”

Syrians and Afghans often speak highly of the people who smuggle them across borders – except when being interviewed by European border guards. This is because the smuggling networks are increasingly controlled from diaspora groups in the EU and family members outside. By contrast, the refugees speak badly of the Istanbul taxi drivers who know the safe houses and are notorious for overcharging Syrians.

Migrants are using the networks designed to escape development failures. Syrians flee in no small part because of poor urbanization. They coordinate themselves via smartphone. If they move on from Turkey, it is in search of education for their children. As for those arriving in the EU, sixty percent rely on classic travel agents and just two percent on the EU’s attempts to engage on social media.

Why are we not looking for bottom-up solutions across the Middle East? Aid workers on the front line in northern Syria complain that large humanitarian organizations are “withdrawing from the world.” Big organizations, says one aid worker, subcontract the spadework to smaller ones like his, meaning he is the one teaching the law of war in rebel-held zones or deciding whether to help refugees cross borders. As they divorce themselves from reality, the big organizations take the moral high ground in Brussels and Berlin, but they can no longer convey information from the ground up.

Four Observations

If liberals are to rediscover their sense of reality, they may well have to confront some unpalatable political ideas. When Bob Smith and Bob Wilson created their famous 12-step plan to sobriety, they were drawing from their own experience as reformed alcoholics. Consider what follows as talking points of a political rehabilitation drawn from bitter experience.

Europe must externalize the solution. Today, just as in the 1990s, the main locus of the refugee crisis is beyond the EU’s borders. The real global crisis is not one of mobility but immobility: the vast majority of people displaced by violence are internally displaced, unable to cross borders. The majority of those who do leave their country are sitting close to the border. The UK Government Science Office acknowledged this predicament in 2011 when trying to predict numbers of climate refugees: the real problem, it came to realize, would not be mass migration but “trapped populations.”

Refugees are not helpless. OECD data suggest that the people who flee to Europe are often resilient, educated, and trained. But as they enter the EU, they are suddenly made to fit the European conception of what a refugee ought to be. Why do European societies require asylum seekers to be helpless? Today, migrants daily prove the reverse is true: those who move are often safest, have the best job opportunities, and can “vote with their feet.” A liberal Europe that is unable to make a sedentary lifestyle sustainable finds itself trying to make the mobile helpless.

Let’s be more ambitious. Many cling to the belief that all EU migration policy is illiberal, but they cannot offer a clear alternative to it. That is not to deny that some reform proposals do mark a clear liberal alternative – for example giving Frontex a search-and-rescue mandate or creating so-called Nansen passports for people to come to Europe to make a claim for refuge. When these ideas fail to gain traction, their supporters grumble it is because they are too ambitious. The reverse is true: Europe’s politicians have lost a whole liberal toolbox for dealing with migration, one which allowed them to affect the root causes abroad. As a result, the EU is left at the mercy of external forces.

Liberals are fueling populism. Liberals, like populists, are using refugees as metaphors in an emotional debate of their own about the need for a progressive Europe. When liberals cite Europe’s “demographic crisis” as grounds to welcome refugees, they are siding with heavily globalized urban hubs and adopting arguments that reduce people to mere economic or breeding units. This is exactly what populists fear.

Lessons of History

In the early 1990s, the EU experienced the last major shift in global power. At the time, there were fears of a massive, permanent flow of migration. Populists called on the EU to tear up its plans for a passport-free travel area (“Schengen”) and roll back refugee law. Despite the panic, the flows never materialized.

The historical lesson is not that such fears are always unfounded. Rather, it showed how necessary emergency border controls were to reestablish the rule of law and liberal institutions and to usher in a shift in liberal policy.

Those emergency restrictions have been the first priority in this crisis, too. But liberals must see that just as in 1991, European migration policy is a vacuum waiting to be filled – and that they have the scope to propose ambitious long-term reforms. After all, the old European policy of trade liberalization and state-building rested on the pledge that goods, capital, jobs, and democracy would come to the developing world, so people there did not have to move in search of them. It has not worked out that way, and people are on the move. That means the world needs new ways of matching up people and things across borders. Imagine the globalization of the sharing economy!

Away from the emotive debates about the Turkey deal, EU policy is quietly cohering around four principles: helping displaced people help themselves; giving people opportunities as close to home as possible; engaging with the more progressive of the West’s “rivals”; and, creating genuine political partnerships with poorer states.

There is plenty of potential there for a truly liberal approach.

NB. The author’s recent study “People on the Move. The New Global (Dis)Order” can be found here.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – July/August 2016 issue.

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