The migration crisis that Europe has feared for so long has now materialised. Last weekend, the Italian navy picked up 3000 people from ramshackle craft in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Libya.
The Greeks are struggling to cope with the thousands arriving via Turkey.
On the Macedonian border with Greece, riot police tried in vain to hold back hundreds of migrants making their way towards Germany and beyond. In the end, they relented and put many of them on chartered trains heading north.
What is to be done?
The problem for the EU is that the clamour from desperate people wanting to enter its gilded portals cannot be heeded without causing domestic political upheaval. It is all well and good refugee groups and other humanitarian grandstanders calling for the gates to be thrown open to allcomers; this will simply not be countenanced by Europe’s voters.
In Berlin, where Angela Merkel held emergency talks on Monday with France’s President François Hollande, the pressure is mounting on the government after it was confirmed that Germany expected 800000 refugees this year, more than the entire EU received in 2014.
Unsurprisingly, the Germans are now complaining that they are being asked to take too many migrants, all of whom must have arrived through other countries.
The demands for “burden sharing” are growing as the crisis deepens. But what exactly does this mean? Since there are no borders in Europe under the Schengen Agreement, a quota system – whereby, say, Finland takes 50000, Ireland 30000 and the UK 100000 – is meaningless. Once the migrants are in the EU, they can go where they want.
Conditions could be attached to residency qualifications and working rights, but how would they be enforced? ID cards would have to be issued throughout the entire EU. All incomers would have to be fingerprinted and have their biometrics taken and stored. Restrictions would need to be imposed on family reunion.
When the founding fathers of the old Common Market established free movement of people as a fundamental principle, they did not for a moment envisage a borderless entity of 26 continental countries (including four non-EU nations), not least because much of Europe at the time was under the heel of the Soviet Union.
When the Schengen Agreement was signed, in 1985, there were 10 member states – and only five wanted to take part. Britain and Ireland retain an opt-out to this day.
In 1990, the formal abolition of frontiers and visa controls coincided with the collapse of communism and the first wave of immigration into western Europe began, principally from countries that have since joined the EU.
This latest encroachment is far more problematic since there are, in theory, millions of people who would like to come to Europe.
None of the options confronting EU leaders is palatable. They could end the Schengen free movement deal and make it harder to get across Europe. People might stop trying if they knew they would be greeted by border guards every few hundred miles demanding papers. Eventually the word might get back that it was not worth making the perilous journey across the Sahara and the Mediterranean.
In the long term, of course, finding a resolution to the war in Syria would relieve the refugee flow. Until that happens, those – mainly on the Left – who are saying Europe should give a home to many of the two million displaced Syrians might explain which ones, how many and who would choose them.
There are also people demanding a formal procedure be introduced for economic migrants who want to come to Europe. But, again, how would it work logistically?
Where, for instance, would the processing centres be located? Libya? Except there is no government there. Or perhaps Ceuta and Melilla, the two Spanish enclaves in Morocco. But if such a process were formalised, imagine how the numbers would rocket. And then what?
A ceiling could be placed on the number of entrants and guess what happens when the cut-off point is reached: all those who failed to get in would just take to boats and bring us right back to where we started.
Meanwhile, those calling for such a procedure might also consider how it is ethical to encourage the youngest and brightest to uproot themselves from poor African countries that need them to come to rich countries that don’t.
As this week’s Berlin summit testifies, this is causing deep consternation precisely because no one knows what to do about it. The Commission is flapping around with plans for the compulsory fingerprinting of migrants and schemes to identify “safe countries of origin” for resettlement programmes.
The European Parliament wants “safe and lawful routes for asylum seekers and refugees into the EU”.
One leading MEP said the EU should be “building bridges, not erecting barriers”. Doubtless he was pleased with his oratorical flourish, but how does such a fatuous comment help?
A two-year quota scheme to relocate 40000 migrants was agreed earlier in the summer, but this crisis has already gone well beyond that.
Britain has an opt-in, which David Cameron has made clear he will not be exercising. He has been castigated for this in the usual quarters, but what is the alternative?
This week’s immigration figures will confirm that more foreign nationals are settling in Britain than at any time in its history – and that is before the country agrees to take a share of the new migrant wave.
If it were to submit to pressure, and open its doors further, where on Earth will those coming through them live, given the chronic shortage of housing? And where will their children go to school, given the pressure on places especially in the South East?
There are some in Britain who appear to resent the fact that it is an island and continues to enforce border controls.
Sooner or later, however, Chancellor Merkel, President Hollande and their fellow leaders will have to confront the central conundrum at the heart of the institution: how can free movement of people be reconciled with an immigration policy that has clearly fallen apart?
Philip Johnston has been with the Daily Telegraph for more than 20 years. He is currently assistant editor
What’s to be done about the EU’s migrant crisis?
The Greeks are struggling to cope with the thousands arriving via Turkey.
On the Macedonian border with Greece, riot police tried in vain to hold back hundreds of migrants making their way towards Germany and beyond. In the end, they relented and put many of them on chartered trains heading north.
What is to be done?
The problem for the EU is that the clamour from desperate people wanting to enter its gilded portals cannot be heeded without causing domestic political upheaval. It is all well and good refugee groups and other humanitarian grandstanders calling for the gates to be thrown open to allcomers; this will simply not be countenanced by Europe’s voters.
In Berlin, where Angela Merkel held emergency talks on Monday with France’s President François Hollande, the pressure is mounting on the government after it was confirmed that Germany expected 800000 refugees this year, more than the entire EU received in 2014.
Unsurprisingly, the Germans are now complaining that they are being asked to take too many migrants, all of whom must have arrived through other countries.
The demands for “burden sharing” are growing as the crisis deepens. But what exactly does this mean? Since there are no borders in Europe under the Schengen Agreement, a quota system – whereby, say, Finland takes 50000, Ireland 30000 and the UK 100000 – is meaningless. Once the migrants are in the EU, they can go where they want.
Conditions could be attached to residency qualifications and working rights, but how would they be enforced? ID cards would have to be issued throughout the entire EU. All incomers would have to be fingerprinted and have their biometrics taken and stored. Restrictions would need to be imposed on family reunion.
When the founding fathers of the old Common Market established free movement of people as a fundamental principle, they did not for a moment envisage a borderless entity of 26 continental countries (including four non-EU nations), not least because much of Europe at the time was under the heel of the Soviet Union.
When the Schengen Agreement was signed, in 1985, there were 10 member states – and only five wanted to take part. Britain and Ireland retain an opt-out to this day.
In 1990, the formal abolition of frontiers and visa controls coincided with the collapse of communism and the first wave of immigration into western Europe began, principally from countries that have since joined the EU.
This latest encroachment is far more problematic since there are, in theory, millions of people who would like to come to Europe.
None of the options confronting EU leaders is palatable. They could end the Schengen free movement deal and make it harder to get across Europe. People might stop trying if they knew they would be greeted by border guards every few hundred miles demanding papers. Eventually the word might get back that it was not worth making the perilous journey across the Sahara and the Mediterranean.
In the long term, of course, finding a resolution to the war in Syria would relieve the refugee flow. Until that happens, those – mainly on the Left – who are saying Europe should give a home to many of the two million displaced Syrians might explain which ones, how many and who would choose them.
There are also people demanding a formal procedure be introduced for economic migrants who want to come to Europe. But, again, how would it work logistically?
Where, for instance, would the processing centres be located? Libya? Except there is no government there. Or perhaps Ceuta and Melilla, the two Spanish enclaves in Morocco. But if such a process were formalised, imagine how the numbers would rocket. And then what?
A ceiling could be placed on the number of entrants and guess what happens when the cut-off point is reached: all those who failed to get in would just take to boats and bring us right back to where we started.
Meanwhile, those calling for such a procedure might also consider how it is ethical to encourage the youngest and brightest to uproot themselves from poor African countries that need them to come to rich countries that don’t.
As this week’s Berlin summit testifies, this is causing deep consternation precisely because no one knows what to do about it. The Commission is flapping around with plans for the compulsory fingerprinting of migrants and schemes to identify “safe countries of origin” for resettlement programmes.
The European Parliament wants “safe and lawful routes for asylum seekers and refugees into the EU”.
One leading MEP said the EU should be “building bridges, not erecting barriers”. Doubtless he was pleased with his oratorical flourish, but how does such a fatuous comment help?
A two-year quota scheme to relocate 40000 migrants was agreed earlier in the summer, but this crisis has already gone well beyond that.
Britain has an opt-in, which David Cameron has made clear he will not be exercising. He has been castigated for this in the usual quarters, but what is the alternative?
This week’s immigration figures will confirm that more foreign nationals are settling in Britain than at any time in its history – and that is before the country agrees to take a share of the new migrant wave.
If it were to submit to pressure, and open its doors further, where on Earth will those coming through them live, given the chronic shortage of housing? And where will their children go to school, given the pressure on places especially in the South East?
There are some in Britain who appear to resent the fact that it is an island and continues to enforce border controls.
Sooner or later, however, Chancellor Merkel, President Hollande and their fellow leaders will have to confront the central conundrum at the heart of the institution: how can free movement of people be reconciled with an immigration policy that has clearly fallen apart?
Philip Johnston has been with the Daily Telegraph for more than 20 years. He is currently assistant editor
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