Europe’s refugees and migrants: hidden flows, tightened borders and spiralling costs

Since 2012, Europe has experienced record numbers of refugees and migrants arriving in its territories: migration to Europe via the Mediterranean has increased threefold every year. However, since the EU–Turkey deal in early 2016, and other bilateral agreements, the situation has changed. Now, it is predicted that as few as 330,000 refugees and migrants are likely to arrive in Europe via the Mediterranean this year. This is far from the 3 million arrivals expected this year, and less than the 1.1 million arrivals in 2015.

EUROPEAN COMPETITIVENESS, REVISITED

Competitiveness is a nebulous concept, too vague to guide policy. The focus should be on productivity, and how to raise it in an imperfect world which suffers from a lack of demand.

Is this really our conflict?

There isn’t one war, the West versus Isis. Not even after last month’s terrorist attacks in Paris. There are layers of Middle Eastern conflicts, all linked to international intervention, of which the most intractable are heightened by the Sunni-Shia divide.

The Iranian revolution of 1979 established the world’s first officially Islamic regime, but being exclusively Shia, it resurrected memories of the age-old conflict between Sunni and Shia. On coming to power, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini demanded that the Muslim holy sites of Mecca and Medina be managed collectively. In Saudi Arabia this demand was seen as an intolerable challenge. (A young Sunni jihadist, Khaled Kelkal, involved in bombings in France in 1995, said he thought “Shiism was invented by the Jews to divide Islam” (1).) Violence against Shia by Saudi Wahhabis is nothing new: in 1802 the sack of Karbala (now in Iraq) led to the destruction of Shia shrines and tombs including that of the Prophet’s son-in-law Hussein, and the killing of many of the city’s inhabitants.

BIG DATA, BIG BROTHER? HOW TO SECURE EUROPEANS' SAFETY AND PRIVACY

In the wake of the Paris attacks and the renewed threat to Europe’s security, Camino Mortera-Martinez highlights a difficult trade-off for the EU: how to tackle cross-border crime without invading citizens’ right to privacy.

In a new policy brief: "Big data, Big Brother? How to secure Europeans’ safety and privacy", Mortera-Martinez urges the EU to: 

South Europe's debt about to explode

The fall of Coelho's conservative forces in Portugal and the preparation for a left-wing coalition government has not been received with enthusiasm in Berlin and Brussels. Not only for political and ideological reasons, but mainly for the fact that after Greece, Portugal is expected to put in question austerity politics in the European South.

What does India think?

India is changing, and Europe is missing out. India is now the world’s fastest-growing economy, ahead of China, and the European Union is both its biggest market and biggest trading partner. The two unions share common values and democratic political systems. Yet Brussels has not found time to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and trade talks are deadlocked.

Europeans are frustrated by India’s complexity, fragmentation, and changing rules. But, while European firms complain about the difficulty of doing business across the diverse Indian subcontinent, few realise that Indians feel exactly the same about Europe. Indians tend to approach Europe through bilateral relationships with each member state, rather than treating it as a whole.

Viktor Orban Wades into Hungary’s Dark Waters

 

A specter is haunting Europe — the spirit of reactionary populism. Xenophobic parties are deeply entrenched in the politics of such staunchly democratic nations as France and Holland; but the greater danger lies to the east. Earlier this month, the anti-immigrant Freedom Party almost won provincial elections in reliably left-wing Vienna; in elections held Sunday, Poles gave a parliamentary majority to the right-wing Law and Justice party.

Saving Schengen: How to protect passport-free travel in Europe

Schengen countries must decide when Bulgaria and Romania should join, whether Greece should leave and how to work more closely with Turkey on border control. 

Greece was already at the eye of the storm in 2012: not only was it at the centre of the euro crisis, but it was also showing systemic deficiencies in its border control and asylum systems. Today Greece is still the weakest link in both the euro and Schengen chains. In the report Brady, now an aide to European Council president Donald Tusk, argued that governments and the European Commission should sort out Greece’s dysfunctional immigration and asylum system, accelerate existing border-control initiatives, and strengthen co-operation with countries in North Africa, Russia, and, most importantly, Turkey. These policy recommendations remain particularly valid today, in the light of Europe’s current refugee crisis.  

Global slowdown: The eurozone to reap what it has sown?

The slowdown in emerging markets leaves the eurozone even more reliant on exports to the US and UK to compensate for its feeble domestic economy. 

The eurozone is banking on a weak euro and strong global growth to boost exports and inflation and offset the weakness of domestic demand. How likely is this? China might yet avoid a recession, but there is no doubt that it is set for a period of much slower growth. At the same time, pretty much every emerging market is weakening, partly because of their dependence on China, and partly because of sluggish productivity growth. The US Federal Reserve’s decision not to increase official interest rates is welcome: a rise would have prompted further capital outflows from emerging markets. But there is no doubt that the global economy is labouring, and that this poses a threat to the eurozone’s anaemic recovery. 

The Middle East Visits Europe: The Ramifications of the Refugee Crisis

The European Union finds itself in the throes of a far-reaching humanitarian crisis, as waves of refugees and asylum seekers flock to its gates in numbers not seen since the end of World War II. The hundreds of thousands who have already arrived and the hundreds of thousands who are expected to reach the shores of Europe before the end of the year have taken EU member states by (incomprehensible) surprise and consequently, have found these states unprepared to deal with the influx. At the same time, the EU is in the throes of a deep identity crisis. The lack of solidary and willingness to share the burden of the refugees is a manifestation of the societies’ deep dissimilarities stemming from cultural, political, economic, and historical differences that are difficult to weather in a crisis. Europe’s acceptance of Syrian and other Middle Eastern nationals who for years experienced anti-Israel and anti-Semitic indoctrination will also affect the refugees’ ability to adopt the historical lessons and sociopolitical meanings of World War II already internalized by European societies. Will the new Europeans feel the same moral, historical commitment? Current experience with the positions of EU’s Muslim residents toward Jews and Israel does not bode well for this outcome.

Europe’s refugee crisis: Chronicle of a death foretold

The forces driving refugees towards the EU will not disappear in the foreseeable future. Europe needs a comprehensive long-term strategy to improve the political and security situation in its neighbourhood. And whatever else it does, it needs to take urgent steps to accommodate and integrate refugees already in Europe. The European Commission is on the right track and the member-states should follow its lead.

The response of European leaders to the scale and urgency of the refugee crisis has been inadequate. Stronger fences have not stopped migrants at Calais from regularly disrupting train services to the UK; or those in Serbia from walking along train tracks into Hungary. People still climb on board rickety boats along the Turkish and Libyan coasts. Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, has suggested that the Schengen agreement could be suspended, allowing EU member-states to reimpose border controls between them – but that would only leave even greater numbers of refugees stuck in ‘frontline’ EU states like Greece.

The Undiplomats: Right-wing populists and their foreign policies

• As right-wing populist parties have shifted from being marginal players to important political actors in Europe, they have also turned their attention from domestic to foreign and security policy, in ways that sometimes threaten European interests. Mainstream parties need to find effective ways to counter them.

• Right-wing populist parties disagree on many foreign policy issues. They range from anti-American to pro-American, from Russophile to Russosceptic and from isolationist to internationalist. But they are united on some points, notably euroscepticism. They oppose further EU enlargement and, especially, Turkish membership of the EU.
  

Europe Rethinks the Schengen Agreement

Forecast

• Rising immigration and fragile economic recovery in Europe will reduce political support for the Schengen Agreement, which eliminates border controls among member states.
• The Schengen Agreement will likely be reformed to make room for countries to tighten their border controls more frequently.
• Friction between Schengen members and other countries will remain, as will tension within the bloc itself.

Europe’s geopolitical suffering

Andrea Bonetti

Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori

"Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman, a University Professor and a keen observer of the political and economic international situation. During his long career he has held numerous high positions in prestigious Italian and foreign companies. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale SpA”, the Laboratory Foundation for Public Administration and the Italian delegation of the Abertis Foundation. He is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group, Khashoggi Holding’s advisor and holder of important professorships at prestigious universities such as Yeshiva University in New York, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem and The Peking University.

What Borders Mean to Europe

Europe today is a continent of borders. The second-smallest continent in the world has more than 50 distinct, sovereign nation-states. Many of these are part of the European Union. At the core of the EU project is an effort to reduce the power and significance of these borders without actually abolishing them — in theory, an achievable goal. But history is not kind to theoretical solutions.

Today, Europe faces three converging crises that are ultimately about national borders, what they mean and who controls them. These crises appear distinct: Immigration from the Islamic world, the Greek economic predicament, and the conflict in Ukraine would seem to have little to do with each other. But in fact they all derive, in different ways, from the question of what borders mean.

A Net Assessment of Europe

Europe is undergoing two interconnected crises. The first is the crisis of the European Union. The bloc began as a system of economic integration, but it was also intended to be more than that: It was to be an institution that would create Europeans. The national distinctions between European nations is real and has proved destabilizing, since Europe has been filled with nations with diverging interests and historical grudges. The EU project did not intend to abolish these nations; the distinctions and tensions were too deep. Rather it was intended to overlay national identities with a European identity. There would be nations and they would retain ultimate sovereignty, but the citizens of these nations would increasingly come to see themselves as Europeans. That European identity would both create a common culture and diminish the particularity of states. The inducement to all of Europe was prosperity and peace. The European Union would create ongoing prosperity, which would eliminate the danger of conflict. The challenge to Europe in this sense was that prosperity is at best cyclical, and it is regional. Europe is struggling with integration because without general prosperity, the seduction of Europeans away from the parochial allure of nations will fail. Therefore, the crisis of the European Union, focused on the European Peninsula, is one of the destabilizing forces. 

European War Games: Responses to Russian Military Drills

A Dutch helicopter participates in a NATO anti-submarine exercise in the North Sea on May 4. (MARIT HOMMEDAL/AFP/Getty Images)

Several events have coincided to demonstrate the dynamic, if not guarded, relationship between Russia and the Nordic and Baltic states. Ten NATO countries and Sweden launched a two-week planned exercise in the North Sea on May 4 to improve their anti-submarine warfare capabilities. On the same day, Finland — not a NATO member — began mailing letters to about 900,000 reservists informing them of their roles in a potential crisis situation. Meanwhile, Sweden's Foreign Ministry formally complained to Russian authorities that Russian navy ships were disrupting cable-laying work in waters between Sweden and Lithuania, the latest in a series of formal complaints over Russia's activity in the area. Concurrently, the Swedish and Lithuanian foreign ministers met with Moldova's pro-West leaders in Chisinau.

Why Europe’s Migrant Tragedy Is a Political Crisis

When some 800 people — the exact number remains unclear — drowned this weekend aboard a ramshackle vessel attempting to smuggle refugees from Libya to Italy, they ran into what has become Europe’s deadliest border control.

In Europe’s ongoing quest to reinforce its borders and keep migrants out, the Mediterranean Sea has emerged as its latest, though not particularly effective, tool to control the flow of people into the continent. In recent years, Europe has significantly hardened its land borders, and given increased political instability and conflict in the Middle East and North Africa, the Mediterranean has become the most popular point of crossing for the hundreds of thousands seeking to escape violence, poverty, and persecution.

Letter from America: Europe is needed as never before

Twenty years ago, Nick Butler and I conceived the CER as an antidote to the fustiness that we felt pervaded too much of the debate about the future of Europe – notably in London but also elsewhere. We felt that a new generation of Europeans, born after the war and ready to think in new ways about Europe, needed to make their voices heard. We were convinced that Britain could do better than fight a ‘beef war’, and that the EU would benefit from positive British engagement.

Fast forward 100 issues of the CER bulletin, and some things have changed. Enlargement has 

turned from dream into reality, and Europe is stronger for being wider. Just look at how policy 

on Russia is now much better balanced than it was 20 years ago. The euro has turned from 

dream into…well, into a huge challenge for millions of unemployed in southern Europe. 

Germany has moved from being a new country finding its feet to the first among equals.

The New Drivers of Europe's Geopolitics

For the past two weeks, I have focused on the growing fragmentation of Europe. Two weeks ago, the murders in Paris prompted me to write about the fault line between Europe and the Islamic world. Last week, I wrote about the nationalism that is rising in individual European countries after the European Central Bank was forced to allow national banks to participate in quantitative easing so European nations wouldn't be forced to bear the debt of other nations.

This is the week to speak of the political and social fragmentation within European nations and its impact on Europe as a whole. The coalition of the Radical Left party, known as Syriza, has scored a major victory in Greece. Now the party is forming a ruling coalition and overwhelming the traditional mainstream parties. It is drawing along other left-wing and right-wing parties that are united only in their resistance to the EU's insistence that austerity is the solution to the ongoing economic crisis that began in 2008.