Kalle Sysikaski
The PEACE Union of Finland

Irregular migration to Europe did decrease last year, primarily because fewer Syrians are fleeing their war-torn country. More migrants -almost 700 000 people- are also being detained in Libya. As a result many African migrants in Italy who have crossed the Sahara to Libya have stated that they eventually boarded a boat from there not as a final step toward Europe but to escape imprisonment or torture in Libya.

Migrant routes into the EU also continue to shift in response to closing boarders . Spain has seen sea arrivals increase tenfold since 2015. This is mainly because Italy where most refugees arrive by boat from North Africa has tried to keep migrants out in a different ways like outsourcing its border security. In 2017 Italy struck a deal to supply Libyan cost guard with vessels and anti-smuggling training.

The agreement promised USD325 million if Libyan agents would intercept migrants crossing the Mediterranean and return them to Libyan detention centres.

HR organisations have guestioned the deal, citing Libya´s political unrest and documented history of migrant enslavement and torture. When returning migrants to detention centers Libya may also violate international law because refugees cannot be kept safe there.

Persecution, conflicts and human rights violations continue to force people to flee their homes and seek safety in Europe keeping in mind that there are more than 60 million refugees alltogether in the world, out of whom only a small minority want to come to Europe.

In 2015 high numbers of migrants , most of them from Syria, Afganistan and Iraq entered the EU via Turkey,Macedonia, Serbia and other Balkan countries by foot.

An estimated 362 000 refugees and migrants risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea in 2016 with 181,000 arriving to Italy and 173,000 in Greece. In the first half of 2017, over 100,000 refugees and migrants entered Europe. Many thousands have died or have gone missing since beginning of 2017.

Those arriving in Europe need adeguate reception and assistance ,particulaly those with specific needs including unaacomppanied and separated children and surivivors of sexual and gender based violence . More solidarity is needed within the EU to ensure protection including through efficient and speedy family reunion and relocation.

In 2015 some European states led by Germany, recognized that their strategy of seeking to block refugees moving across borders was unrealistic and harmful. Countries worked together to allow migrants to move onwards to the places they wished to reach, This allowed reception countries to focus their resources on supporting asylum seekers and considering claims.

But by 2016 support for this policy began to wane, with increased hostility towards migrants entering the political discourse -even if there were thousands of groups consisting of common people in European countries who wanted to help and support the asylum seekers. Certain countries along the migrant route began to close their borders. The situation further deteriorated when the EU´s decision to transfer 160 000 asylum seekers from Greece and Italy to other European member states was met with widespread resistance. In the end only few countries ,mainly in the north of Europe took the transfers.

In response to the failure to adeguately process asylum claims, the EU set up special hotspots in Greece and Italy. Hotspots identify,register and fingerprint incoming migrants and redirect them either towards asylum or return procedures. In practice many hotspots are turning into overcrowded and understaffed detention and expulsion centers with little external oversight.

In March 2016 the EU announced a deal in which Turkey would try to stop people from moving onward into Europe. In return Turkey was promised financial assistance, visa-free travel to the EU for Turkish citizens. But the deal failed to close the border, even if it slowed the movements from Turkey, and thousands of migrants continued to travel irregularly using smugglers and illegal risky means. Since the deal only about 1000 asylum seekers have been sent back from Greece to Turkey because Greek officials and courts consider Turkey to be an unsafe country.

This deal is one example of a controversial practice in which the EU links development aid or economic incentives to commitments by states to stem and manage the movements of people from their territory. Similar deals are planned with number of third countries including Libya, Egypt, Sudan and Nigeria.

The European Commission proposes a new “Partnership Framework” with third countries in the Middle East and Africa , leading to criticism by a broad range of actors for deal making with countries with poor human rights record and for conflicting with international protection frameworks, including the right to leave one´s own country.

The EU also continues to support refugees in host countries like Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan -where the majority of Syrian refugees are hosted – including through funding for UN agencies working in the field such as the UNHCR and The WFP.

With anti-immigration sentiment on the rise across the continent, the presence in Italy´s government of the far-right party of Matteo Salvini, which campaigned on a pledge to send 500 000 irregular migrants home, is making itself felt. The similarly rightwing, populist Freedom party is sharing power in Austria.

In Germany – which wellcomed more than 1 million migrants in 2015 under Angela Merkel´s open-door policy – the rightwing Alternativ fur Deutcshland party has kept immigration at the top of the political agenda. After many electoral setbacks Merkel has said she will not stand again. Polling shows immigration and terrorism remain EU citizens top concern. Every time there is a islamist terrorist attack or a migrant commit even to a small crime the right-wing parties try to benefit from that.

That is the case also in France, Finland, Sweden, Norway and Denmark where the government is governing with the support of the far right. The main political plank of the far right is to stir up anxiety and threat by migrants.

There is a wide political understanding that Europe needs to urgently overhaul its asylum and immigration rules. At present Spain, Italy and Greece take most of the strain owing to their geographical position on the Mediaterranean Sea and the fact that under EU law, asylum seekers must lodge their applications in the first country they enter.

However , no one can agree on what to do. The political leaderships in some countries want tougher external border controls, others fairer distribution of new arrivals. Any solution wll have to balance the concerns of frontline southern states with those of wealthier northern destination states while dealing with the refusal of hardline central and eastern ones like Hungary and Poland to accept migrants at all. Hungary´s leader Victor Orban is leading a call for a strong border to stop an invasion.

But the migration is one of the great challenges of the globalised world. Refugess will always move across borders to seek safety for themselves and their families in the face of war, percecution and conflict. People who face poverty in their home country will always move in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

The underlying causes of migration is instability and oppressions in their own country. Wars, militray interventions foment the breakdown of socieities. There are spill over of conflict to neighbouring regions. Such insecurity leads to massive migration. TheEU must ceize support to militray interventions, agrresive wars and rogue regimes. The political focus should be on humane policy and institutional responses to migration rather than on emergancy humanitarian relief.