EUs response to migration crisis is too little, too late

Katie Rashid is a writer specializing in the Middle East and International

Migration. She has an MSc in International Relations from the London School
of Economics and formerly worked for the Arab Studies Institute and
Northwestern University's MENA Program.
The refugee crisis splashed across the news daily is not new. While it has
certainly taken a new turnthe International Organization for Migration
estimated 350,000 detected migrants at the borders of the EU between
January and August of 2015, up from 280,000 in 2014it is rooted in years of
violence and war around the world. It did not start a few months ago with the
increase in the number of arrivals and an increase in capsizing boats.
Refugees fleeing from war, violence and repression in Syria, Eritrea, the DRC,
Afghanistan, Iraq and Nigeria, just to name a few, are all victims of conflicts in
unstable states that have been raging for many years. According to
Eurostats May 2015 report, there were 431,000 asylum applications filed in
the European Union in 2013, and 626,000 in 2014. In 2014, asylum
applications from Syria alone reached 122,000. From 2000 to 2014, the IOM
reported that 22,000 migrants died in an effort to reach Europe.
Earlier this month, the president of the European Commission Jean-Claude
Juncker called for the implementation of a quota system in which each
member state would be responsible for resettling the 160,000 people
currently in Greece, Hungary and Italy. According to this plan, the number of
people accepted would be based on each countrys current population,
economic strength, unemployment rate and the number of asylum
applications approved over the past five years. In his State of the European
Union speech on September 9, Juncker warned, Do not underestimate the
urgency. Do not underestimate our imperative to act. Yet, despite Junckers
strong call to action, Germany so far has been unable to persuade Hungary,
Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Poland to accept the system.
The question we are left with is why the EU has been so late to take action.
With more than 430,000 asylum applications filed back in 2013 and the same
conflicts raging that have brought in a steady stream of refugees for years,
the European Union should have seen this coming. That the EU is only now
scrambling to find an approach to this situation with no agreement in sight is
just one more disturbing reality of the migration crisis.

Furthermore, whatever the EU comes up with will be just thatan approach.

A plan that will allow for its states to simply do something with the
thousands upon thousands of migrants crossing their borders. Once the EU
comes to an agreement on where these individuals should go and how many
should be sent, they will then face the even larger task of supporting the
refugees in the asylum and integration processes, both immensely complex
systems in their own rights.
By reading the signs and anticipating the influx, a sufficient approach could
have been constructed years ago that would allow for the support of those
seeking refuge. Instead, the opposite was done. A glaring example is the
termination of Italys Operation Mare Nostrum in October 2014. Responding
to the death of 300 migrants off Lampedusa in October 2013, the Italian
government initiated Mare Nostrum to prevent further migrant deaths at sea.
A true search and rescue mission, in its single year of operation it was
estimated to have saved around 150,000 people and covered about 70,000
square kilometers of the Mediterranean.
Battling its own recession and trying to absorb what it could of the people
landing on its shores, Italy simply could not afford the 9 million euro per
month that Mare Nostrum cost. Thus it pulled the reigns and Operation Triton,
conducted by Frontex, was implemented in its place. In contrast to Mare
Nostrums expansive coverage, Triton extends only 30 nautical miles from the
Italian coast and has a budget of 2.9 million euro per month. It is meant not
to be search and rescue operation but merely a border protection system.
Within the first few months of 2015, Triton saw a dramatic rise in deaths at
sea. In April, the EU heads of state attempted to bolster the operation,
tripling its financial resources and adding more vessels, but its impact still
cannot be compared to that of Mare Nostrum.
The equation is simple: those fleeing war and escaping conflict and human
rights abuses at home will continue to arrive in Europe as long as these
dangers persist. However, rather than anticipating the increase in refugees
seeking safety via a perilous journey at sea, Italy and the rest of the EU
replaced an operation that saved about 150,000 lives throughout its life cycle
with one that has a much more limited capacity. Lessons were clearly not
learned from the migrant influx at Italys southern border over the past two
years, and they were certainly not passed along to the rest of Europe.
Now, with the problem exacerbated into a true crisis, Hungary has responded
by building a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia and Germany is
instituting temporary border controls with Austria. All the while, EU ministers
scratch their heads. Perhaps the EUs inability to plan for this crisis is a
precursor to what will happen in the coming weeks and monthscontinued
chaos at the hands of inadequate policies, a lack of unity and more
unnecessary deaths.
PS21 is a nonpartisan, nongovernmental, nonideological organization. All
views expressed are the authors own.