The Aegean Airlines flight left Athens for Brussels at 8:30am on Nov. 4, carrying six Syrian and Iraqi families to new lives in Luxembourg. On arrival, the 30 refugees were taken on a two-hour bus trip to the grand duchy to have their paperwork processed.
It was undoubtedly a big moment, not only for the men, women and children who made the short but treacherous crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands. Of the more than 600,000 people who have crossed into the EU by reaching Greece this year, these were the first to be registered, fingerprinted and then resettled elsewhere in Europe under the EU’s ambitious, if flagging, plan to use compulsory quotas to share 160,000 refugees.
It took the Luxembourg authorities two months to settle their newcomers. None of those lingering in Greece wanted to move to the EU’s wealthiest nation in per capita terms, second globally only to Qatar. Luxembourg chairs the EU’s rotating presidency.
Illustration: Yusha
European Commission President and former Luxembourg prime minister Jean-Claude Juncker is one the architects of the new quota system. So Luxembourg officials were keen to be seen to be doing their bit.
“Some of those selected to go to Luxembourg refused, because they all wanted to go to Germany,” EU Commissioner for Migration, Home Affairs and Citizenship Dimitris Avramopoulos said.
If refugees are refusing to go to Luxembourg, it would be a much taller order persuading them to go to Slovakia or Estonia.
The faltering start in Greece to sharing refugees in Europe highlights the EU’s multiple dilemmas, as leaders met in Malta on Wednesday and Thursday last week for their fifth summit since June on the emergency.
The confusion, disputes and mudslinging of the past few months have opened up a fundamental question. Do they want a Europe of open or closed borders? The dilemma is embodied in the diametrically opposed policies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orb.
Merkel has won international plaudits for her liberal, open-door policies. She is also under siege, however, at home from malcontents in her coalition government, in the EU because her partners are not sure what she wants, and by other nations who said they are willing to help but are also baffled by the absence of coherent policy in Berlin.
Orb, gleefully denouncing liberals as clueless, sealing Hungary’s borders with razorwire and effectively abolishing the claiming of asylum, is walking tall at home because of his hardline policies. He is also increasingly winning the quiet support of other EU leaders.
“I don’t say he should be entirely supported,” a senior senior diplomat involved with the Malta summit said. “But he has a point. There is some truth in what he says. Drastic, restrictive positions would have helped earlier.”
The two-day Valletta summit was a lavish event, bringing together more than 60 European and African leaders, with the EU carrying a mixed bag of sticks and carrots, including a US$1.9 billion “trust fund” in an attempt to convince African governments into taking refugees and migrants back and stopping them from coming to Europe in the first place.
Many of them are disenchanted with an EU containment strategy that they feel resembles a form of blackmail.
“They say it’s all about Europe externalizing and outsourcing its own problems,” said the diplomat, who has been liaising with African governments.
“The Europeans are not exactly visionaries,” another international official involved with the Malta summit said. “And they don’t realize that they are no longer the center of the world.”
The African meetings were followed by another emergency EU summit called by European Council President Donald Tusk, who increasingly takes a pro-Orb line on the crisis.
His entourage is predicting that Tusk will push for “drastic and radical action” by the EU, which translates as partial border closures in Europe’s Schengen area, both externally and internally.
Given its size and geography, and the number of people involved, Germany is Europe’s shock absorber in the refugee crisis.
It is expected to take in 1 million newcomers this year.
At a meeting with Balkan leaders two weeks ago, Merkel was repeatedly asked to clarify her policy.
“Many of them did not like that they were summoned by Germany to be told what to do. But the problem is that the Germans don’t know what to do,” the senior diplomat said.
The signals from Berlin have been very mixed over the past week. Merkel’s interior and finance ministers, both in the same party, regularly contradict her. On Nov. 5, the interior ministry announced an abrupt U-turn, saying Syrians would no longer qualify for full asylum in Germany. That was then retracted amid coalition cacophony. On Tuesday, the same ministry said Berlin was ending the open-door policy on Syrians and would now return them to the country where they entered the EU, albeit not Greece.
This amounts to a tightening of the German border, with alarming knock-on effects for EU nations such as Croatia and Slovenia, which would only let tens of thousands of refugees in if they are in transit. The same applies to non-EU countries on the Balkan route, such as Serbia and Macedonia.
“Merkel was asked if she would close the border and told the other leaders very clearly ‘I will never do that,’” another senior EU policymaker said. “If you close the German border, you end European integration. You cannot do that.”
However, Merkel is increasingly lonely and embattled. Policymakers privately said that she is looking for a way to back down without losing face. Her open policy is being tightened incrementally. She also wants to strike a deal with Turkey, paying Ankara to police the EU’s external border with Greece, essentially because there is no confidence in Athens’ ability to do it.
In the latest policy move, Berlin and Brussels are pressing the transit countries of the Balkans to set up new “processing centers” to screen asylum claimants. It is an admission that the policy of having them fingerprinted and registered first in Greece before moving on has failed. Nor do Slovenia, Croatia or Serbia want to register them, however, for fear they would then be saddled with responsibility for the refugees.
Avramopoulos sounds bitter and disenchanted.
“Schengen is the greatest and most tangible achievement of European integration,” he said. “But some policies are putting Schengen in danger. It’s a difficult moment for Europe. Unfortunately, the European dream has vanished.”
The confusion over policy is made worse by the increasingly risible mismatch between what EU leaders say and do. A few weeks ago they promised to send 400 police officers to Slovenia to help with the influx.
Only 33 have arrived. Of the 160,000 refugees they agreed to share in September — this is now EU law — 116 have been resettled from Italy and Greece.
Months ago they also agreed to share 22,500 refugees taken directly from camps in Turkey and Lebanon.
To date, 132 Syrians have arrived in Liechtenstein, the Czech Republic and Italy. At every emergency meeting, ministers and leaders call for reinforcements for the EU’s border agency, Frontex. They then fail to supply the staffing, funding and equipment they promised.
“Most of these leaders are lost and they’re looking to someone like Tusk to come up with a big idea,” the senior diplomat said. “This is the challenge, because the whole thing can crumble and individual nations would start following Hungary. That won’t help Europe to remain credible.”
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