For a European Migration-Policy

Alfonso Sabatino and Antonio Longo
Alfonso Sabatino is Member of the Central Committee of UEF-Italy
Antonio Longo is Editor of the bi-monthly journal L'Unità europea

“The Law of World Citizenship shall be limited to conditions of universal hospitality ... It is not a question of philanthropy ... It is a right of temporary sojourn, a right to associate, which all men have. They have it by virtue of their common possession of the surface of the earth”.

Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace (1795)

Premise

The migration of peoples is, increasingly, a global issue. It is estimated that around 258 million people (see the UN’s International Migration Report, 2017) are concerned, about 3% of the earth’s population, which has been steadily increasing in recent decades. They are mainly heading for Asia (80 millions), the European Union (57.3 million, of which 36.9 non-EU citizens and 20.4 EU citizens (Eurostat, 1.1.2017)) and North America (58 million), and represent around 15% of the North American population and 7.4% of the EU population, if we duly consider only the immigrants from outside the EU, as the others are European citizens who enjoy free movement in the EU. Unfortunately, the migratory flows that are directed towards Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, and determine their regressive internal political reactions, are generated by political constraints and economic need, and by the dramatic and unequal distribution of power and wealth in the world. Given these structural reasons, migration can be defined as the social question of the 21st century, just as the workers’ question characterized the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

There follows that, in the current social and international framework, Europe must first of all become aware that either it will take on the problems of the world, thus becoming the model and engine of the world unification process, or it will pay the consequences, in terms of continued destabilization, ungoverned migrations, outbreaks of war at its borders, trade protectionism, nationalism, terrorism and more. It goes without saying that Europe can face these challenges only if it advances in its process of political unification, based on the construction of its own supranational (federal) government in the fields of economics and security.

The migration issue, therefore, requires innovative European solutions. In relation to this political objective, it must be remarked that, for years, the EU and its national governments have been tackling the migration issue with two approaches, both of them wrong.

The first is to consider migration as an emergency, rather than a structural phenomenon. As an answer to that emergency, the European policies so far experimented swing back and forth between the need to save lives, manage relief and relocate refugees between different countries, and, on the contrary, the ill-concealed desire to not really face the problem and hand it over to one’s adjoining country. The second is the persistent centrality of national governments in the management of migration flows, with the use of the intergovernmental method in the management of Community-level affairs. This prevents the affirmation of the Union’s general interest and its intervention in setting up a European plan with possibly common solutions. It is for this reason that, in the absence of a real European plan, there remains only a perennial “emergency-driven and national” management of the problem.

Faced with the evident failure of such a national management of the migration problem, it is time for the European institutions, as well as the European political forces, to present to the public opinion comprehensive proposals, consistent with the structural nature of the problem and with the respect for human rights. Some have been heatedly debated in the last European elections in May 2019.

Those now elected to the leadership of the Commission (and therefore of the Union) must propose a credible European Plan on the issue of migration. That said, we can outline three macro-areas of analysis, logically and politically correlated, with a view to identify problems and solutions: a) the areas upstream (the causes); b) those along the flow-management (the migrants’ movements); c) those downstream (the management and inclusion-processes of migrants).

Moreover, Europe must be fully aware that the migration problem is manifested on a territorial level along three main directions: from the South (Africa), from the South-East (Middle East) and from the East (Ukraine). In practice, from the three EU-neighborhood areas, clearly vital to its safety and development. However, the EU can set up a serious migration policy regarding its neighborhood areas only if it tackles in advance and correctly the relationship it intends to establish with Africa.

A. The heart of the problem: Africa-Europe relations

1. Africa is a young continent with a strong demographic development. Its population is expected to double from 1.1 to over 2 billion inhabitants over the next thirty years. In practice, a demographic growth certainly not sustainable, given its current conditions of development: a social bomb ready to explode at the world level.

2. On the other hand, Europe is an “old” continent with a low trend of population growth. Despite the monetary union, the single market and the numerous common policies, it is still politically divided, like Africa. Both continents are therefore politically weak, in a world that instead presents – in the West and in the East alike – global, consolidated (USA) or expanding (China, Russia, India) powers. Thus, there is an evident need to tread on parallel paths aiming for Europe to complete and for Africa to start a process of political unification; both should consider the idea of an economic and social integration between Africa and Europe, based on a great political project co-managed by the two continents and aimed at a sustainable development.

A European Plan for Africa (Europe for Africa), outside the hegemonic temptations possibly arising from the colonial past, represents the premise and the strategic condition for the solution of the same migration issue.

3. Europe’s main task is primarily a political one: encouraging initiatives aimed at advancing the process of African unity and economic integration. In this regard, the following should be noted: 1) the “Treaty establishing a continental free trade area”, signed in Kigali on 21 March 2018 by 44 of the 55 member states of the African Union; 2) the creation of a continental Agency for Electrification with the related plan to achieve the goal of fully (100%) electrifying the continent in 10 years. Both initiatives show that in Africa there are energies available to take in their own hands the destiny of their land. For these reasons, the priority can only be a political agreement between the AU and the EU, for an international cooperation for the purposes of security and development in both continental areas.

4. From an economic point of view, Europe for Africa should translate into a Development and Integration Plan for African Union countries. There are already partial initiatives in this sense: the European Commission has proposed (as part of the European Investment Plan) guarantees to mobilize public and private funds worth € 88 billions to support investments for the supply of energy, water resources and funds for the training of human capital. Furthermore, to implement the electrification plan, a EU financial aid valued at 5 billion dollars for ten years is needed, which would generate a leverage effect on private investments of up to 250 billion dollars. Certainly, the objectives could be more easily achieved with the creation of an Agency for the development of Africa, with a common AU and EU mandate, equipped with financial instruments and also powers of direct intervention against corruption, wastes and abuses.

B. The managing of migration flows

1. The persistence of an almost exclusively national involvement in the management of migration flows (with the consequent contrasts between EU countries) is at the origin of the recurrent crises that manifest themselves on this central point. They arise from a very strong contradiction between the European competence on immigration, on the one hand – which is subject to the Community’s ordinary legislative procedure, requiring a majority vote of the Parliament (which represents the European citizens) and of the Council of Ministers (which represents the States) –, and, on the other hand, the management of incoming flows (procedures and operational practices), as well as the physical allocation of migrants on the territory of EU countries (which still see the States as the final decision-makers on the entry of migrants on their own territory). This contradiction must be resolved.

2. In this context, the current contradictory management of migration flows can be overcome: a) outside the EU, with the launch of a Europe for Africa plan, as indicated above; b) within the EU, by entrusting the European Commission with exclusive executive powers on the management of the external border of the Union, as well as on the possible relocation of migrants between member countries and / or on their free movement within the Union, once the policy to be followed has been decided by a majority vote, by the European institutions.

In particular, asylum applications should be collected and evaluated by a federal European Agency (for example, in the US there is the US Citizenship and Immigration Services, while in the EU these tasks could be performed by FRONTEX).

3. We must also denounce the hypocritical distinction between migrants fleeing wars, dictatorships and terrorism, and migrants fleeing because of starvation from the Sahel and other areas affected by climate change. The former have the opportunity to invoke the international protection provided for by the 1951 Geneva Convention and thus obtain refugee status. The latter, on the other hand, are considered economic migrants, with the consequent possibility of not being accepted and of being repatriated, in the presence of agreements with their countries of origin, or otherwise condemned to live in hiding in the countries of landing, with obvious risks for public order and their personal destiny. For both, in reality, their survival is at risk, and that should lead to a twofold solution with a EU regulatory initiative to supplement the 1951 Geneva Convention. Similarly, as a protection of human life, the problem arises of extending the duty to save lives at sea to the presence of conditions that make life and free human development difficult anywhere in the world. And, again on the subject of discrimination, there is to repeal, on the basis of Art. 22 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, the Dublin III Regulation, that prevents the free movement of migrants in Europe.

C. The integration of migrants

1. An effective integration is possible in a welcoming society, able to include migrants in the economic, social and civil development of the country. The different models of integration in place are, instead, based fundamentally on the principle of national sovereignty, today in crisis due to the process of European unification and globalization. These old models can no longer represent an effective framework for inclusion, for adherence to shared community values and for political participation.

2. Among the costs of “non-Europe”, we must also include those of the “non-inclusion of immigrants in the European society”, not only in economic terms, but also in cultural, social, security-related and political terms. To favor these processes, it is necessary to define projects of inclusion (concerning education and culture, inclusion in the regular labor market, and the acquisition of social, economic, political and citizenship rights), and to set up a special European Agency (of a federal nature) with the specific objective of devising, coordinating and monitoring employment policies to be implemented locally, nationally and throughout Europe (see in this sense the Office of Refugee Resettlement-ORR in the USA, responsible for the financing and management of federal programs aimed at the professional placement and assistance to refugees, whose implementation is the responsibility of member states and local authorities). The creation of such a EU Agency (the tasks of the US ORR could be undertaken and expanded by the EU Agency EASO) is possible on the basis of the current EU legislation, with a co-decision between Parliament and the Council, on a proposal by the Commission. To this Agency it would be necessary to attribute powers of direct intervention towards those States that do not respect the international norms on the violation of human rights, the European laws on migration, as well as the decisions taken by a majority vote by its decision-making bodies, as happens, for example, for the decisions of the Governing Council of the ECB.

3. The task of such an Agency must therefore be completed, at the political and institutional level, with the introduction of European mechanisms for the formation of a civic conscience and a European political will. To this end, it is necessary to introduce some institutional and political innovations such as: a) making mandatory the participation of both the European citizens and the permanently resident migrants in the “European civil service”. This “service” would offer opportunities for interpersonal acquaintance, thus favoring the inclusion of participants in new social and cultural relations; b) assigning active and passive voting rights linked to the granting of “citizenship through residence”, as already happens in some EU countries, but extending that to a European-wide level, in order to induce the political forces to take on the problems of migrants and not be against them. The recognition of the passive suffrage would contribute, then, to the presence in the deliberative assemblies at various levels (from municipal councils to the European Parliament) of migrant representatives, with the right to participate in political decisions of common and their own interest.

The recognition of citizenship through residence, with the related right of circulation throughout the EU territory, would contribute, finally, to overcoming the illegal condition of many migrants, and to naturally distribute their presence where there are greater possibilities of getting jobs.