Amid Spy Charges, Plight of Migrants Is Eclipsed

Updated Oct. 25, 2013 4:59 a.m. ETIt was just two weeks ago that European leaders expressed shock at the tragedy just miles off the Italian island of Lampedusa, where hundreds of African migrants died in a shipwreck.
The loss of life in European waters drove home the sheer desperation that brings migrants from North Africa to Europe on precarious, life-threatening boat journeys. But it also exposed the problems faced by countries on the borders of the European Union.
The migration issue was set to be discussed by EU leaders on Friday in Brussels on the second day of a two-day summit. But for the four countries that are the main gateways for migrants to Europe—Greece, Italy, Malta and Cyprus—the extent to which the issue was overshadowed by new allegations of U.S. spying on its European allies was likely jarring.
EU leaders arriving at the summit Thursday mostly spent time criticizing the U.S. for its alleged spying, rather than commenting on the need to prevent such tragic losses of life in the Mediterranean.
It’s “surreal,” said Maltese Prime Minister Joseph Muscat.
The issue was a top priority for the four countries coming into the summit, and some leaders tried to highlight the plight of the migrants. Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, as he entered the summit meeting, urged a “long-overdue solution” to “the acute problem of illegal migration.”
Martin Schulz, president of the European Parliament, told EU leaders at the summit’s opening that Lampedusa “must be a turning point in European migration policy.”
“At least 20,000 people have died in the last 20 years in the attempt to reach Europe’s coasts,” he said. “We cannot allow yet more to die.”
But their calls for tougher commitments on immigration appeared, based on a draft of the final summit communiqué, to have been pared to just a few watered-down paragraphs.
Such communiqués are supposed to be a guide on commonly agreed lines on policy areas. It’s not rare for negotiations among the bloc’s 28 member states to push these down to the lowest common denominator. In the case of migration, that seems to be rather low.
EU officials and diplomats say a request for extra financial help for these so-called front-line member states was removed from the final draft, which is crafted by EU ambassadors ahead of time but seldom differs from the official version.
A proposal by Italy to make coordination on migratory issues a prerequisite for EU cooperation on trade and foreign policy with third countries was also eliminated.
Stronger wording referring to a “comprehensive” European migration policy—including a harmonized asylum system across the EU—was killed too.
The nations where migrants first arrive in the EU have for years wanted to send most of them to countries further inland, arguing that member states should share the burden based on the size of the member state. The concept—known in EU-speak as “solidarity”—isn’t popular in richer European countries. It too wasn’t mentioned in the draft communiqué.
Instead, EU leaders were set to say that migration will be revisited at a summit dedicated to the issue in June 2014. In the meantime, any action will come from recommendations expected in a December report from the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, and the European External Action Service, the EU’s foreign-policy arm.
“There’s no appetite to look at this,” an official familiar with the talks said. “It’s clear no one really wants a common [EU] policy” on migration.
The official said that even the proposals put forward by Italy were timid and vague, failing to demand anything specific from the rest of the EU—a tacit acknowledgment that it didn’t want to waste political capital for changes that were unlikely to win broad support.
Conditions for a serious political and policy debate on migration in the EU may be better next June. Germany will very likely have formed a government by then and elections for the European Parliament—where euroskeptic and anti-migrant parties are set to perform better than before—will be out of the way.
But the pressure on Europe’s fragmented asylum system will only mount in coming months, as Syria’s civil war deteriorates and the weather in the Mediterranean worsens in winter. For those desperate enough to attempt a boat crossing to Europe’s southern shores, next year’s summit may be seven months too late.
Write to Matina Stevis at matina.stevis@wsj.com

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