f there’s one thing that makes a European Green see red, it’s the EU’s apparent failure to take decisive action on immigration.
This, at any rate, was the gist of two hours spent yesterday with Ulrike Lunacek, co-spokesperson for the European Greens, in Malta on a fact-finding mission in order to prepare for a future European policy on migration.
“What we would like to see is a common European framework regulating all aspects of migration,” the Austrian MEP said when asked to reduce the Greens’ policies to their lowest common denominator. “A policy whereby responsibility would be shared by the Union as a whole, instead of being apportioned among individual member states, as is happening now…”
As Lunacek expounds her party’s future vision for Europe, it becomes clear that the major stumbling block is the EU’s perennial inability to perceive itself as a single bloc in any sphere other than the economy. Among the Green Party’s more imaginative suggestions is the creation of a common European diplomatic corps: a breathtakingly simple concept, which would enable the establishment of European Commission Embassies around the world, so that (among other advantages) migrants would be able to seek asylum and/or information at home or in neighbouring countries… i.e, before taking the long and hazardous route to Europe.
The advantages for Malta are visible at a glance: not only would many immigrants be spared to dangers of a Mediterranean crossing (and the AFM spared having to rescue them at sea); but the Dublin Convention clause so odious to local authorities – the one that forces a country to assume full responsibility for all migrants who apply for refugee status on its soil – would no longer apply to those who fill their forms in an EU embassy abroad.
But for all the apparent simplicity, Lunacek resignedly admits that getting the EU to agree on any form of common policy is next to impossible. “As things stand, there is disagreement even over the European Charter of Human Rights…”
Back to the Dublin Convention: among the proposals made in Alternattiva Demokratika’s recent policy paper on immigration was precisely a reform of the convention to iron out certain injustices affecting smaller nations such as Malta. Ulrike Lunacek was in fact instrumental in the inclusion of AD’s proposal in The European Green’s Policy For a Future Europe, which now states: “The Dublin Convention, which stipulates that asylum seekers must file their application in the country where they enter the EU, should be rendered more flexible for those countries under excessive pressure.”
But while these and other policies are aimed at alleviating Malta’s share of the migration burden, what really propels the Green concern with a holistic approach to the phenomenon is what Lunacek calls Europe’s failure to address the root causes of migration in the first place.
The Greens, she claims, have been longstanding critics of global economic policies that have forced poorer countries, in particular those of sub-Saharan Africa, to liberalise their economies and thereby open their markets to Western exploitation. In some cases, the results have been catastrophic.
“Many of these countries are chiefly dependent on agriculture,” she points out. “By opening their markets, they have become receptacles for the dumping of surplus European produce. This can effectively wipe out a country’s economy…”
This latter point may also be taken as a rejoinder to the oft-heard “anti-immigration” line of criticism, whereby asylum seekers are labelled “economic refugees” by those who would deny them any access to European labour markets whatsoever.
“What we are advocating is a rethink on the issue, whereby migration is not referred to simply as a problem, but also as a possible opportunity,” she says. “Ideally, we would like to get all interested parties around the discussion table to thrash out our differences. It is only then that we can talk of burden sharing, quotas, etc.”
Having said that, Lunacek concedes that Malta’s situation is unique. “Naturally, any discussion on quotas would have to take the exceptional circumstances of certain countries into account.”
The European Green’s policy paper on migration will be discussed in depth at the next Greens conference in Vienna on October 12-13.