National interests collide over future of Europe's migrants

At a hastily arranged summit in Brussels this week, European leaders were unanimous on doing more to save people from drowning in the Mediterranean.

The disagreements came on what to do with them once on dry land.

Suggestions flew. At one point, the UK proposed reception centres in Egypt. Germany called for an experiment splitting refugees between member states based on their population size and economic strength.

Behind these suggestions from leaders lurked a common thread: keep these people out of my country.

The migration crisis has emerged at a time when the anti-immigration backlash is rising across Europe, with far right populist parties such as the National Front in France and Jobbik in Hungary making electoral gains.

Migration policy in the EU is a complex patchwork of sometimes contradictory rules, where national interest collides with humanitarian need and raw politics.

Countries on the EU's edge such as Hungary, Italy and Greece feel that they are being left to bear the brunt of people attempting to reach Europe. But rich northern countries such as Germany, which takes more asylum seekers than any other EU state, feel that others are not doing enough.

"It is not about 'north versus south', but about the countries that are doing a lot and countries that are not doing much at all," said Elizabeth Collett a director at Migration Policy Institute Europe.

When it comes to migration, there are cracks in the power structure of the EU. While the border-free Schengen zone allows citizens to zip between countries with ease, border control and asylum claims are enforced on a national basis, leading to inconsistent policy across the bloc.

On average, more than half of all asylum applications were rejected across the EU in 2014. But in the Netherlands and Sweden, about three-quarters of all asylum applications were accepted in 2014. By contrast in Greece, 85 per cent were turned away, according to figures from Eurostat.

Consequently, those seeking asylum have an incentive to shop around, explains one diplomat. EU rules state that asylum claims must be processed at the location of the first application, but these are inadequately enforced - creating tension between governments.

One of the reasons member states were so reluctant to support Italy's demands for a comprehensive search and rescue operation in the Mediterranean last year stemmed from its failure to process arrivals properly, according to one diplomat. It has taken the death of 1,600 migrants attempting the crossing since the start of 2014 to prompt European leaders to support the expansion of Italy's Triton rescue operation.

So-called responsibility sharing - the preferred term to burden sharing for campaigners and, increasingly, governments - is regularly called for, but leaders shied away from concrete proposals at Thursday's summit.

A voluntary plan to resettle refugees across the EU was watered down at the summit. While some, including the European Commission, lobbied for 10,000 to take part in the scheme and for it to be mandatory, others wanted it to be voluntary without a target. The latter prevailed.

These plans are aimed at smoothing out the EU's lumpy distribution of refugees. In 2014, Germany received more than 200,000 applications; Poland, its neighbour, 8,000; Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia collectively 970; and Sweden 81,000.

But sharing refugees between member states more equitably sits badly both with the member states which will be expected to receive more and often the refugee themselves. "Nobody wants to have asylum in Estonia," said one diplomat. "Their dream is not be in eastern Hungary - they want to be in Austria or Sweden."

This leads to further complications, according to analysts. "If you tell someone to go to Romania, how do you a) make sure they are hosted properly and b) make sure that they will stay there?" asks Ms Collet from the MPI.

An absence of internal border controls means that an unhappy refugee can easily pop up in another country, unless processed properly. "Nobody dares to say it publicly, but [Dublin] can be abused very easily," says one diplomat from a country on Schengen's edge.

Free movement combined with the absence of a common migration policy will continue to give policy makers problems, says one diplomat: "Europe put the cart before the horse."

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