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The EU uses the weaker economies of member states to prop up the liberal ideals of wealthier members
Tomorrow, the EU is expected to broker an agreement on the relocation of asylum seekers arriving in Italy and Malta. The deal is a clear attempt by the EU to reward Italy’s electorate following the departure of nationalist leader Matteo Salvini in favour of a more Europhile government. But will it go far enough?
Italian voters have seen first-hand the way in which France, in particular, has paid lip service to the idea of open borders, while quietly hardening its own. Time and again Macron has shown deep levels of hypocrisy towards Italy - he has berated the electorate for embracing a populist leader with a firm stance on immigration and yet resisted migrant quotas of his own.
The EU will no doubt champion the agreement as a triumph of European co-operation. But if the deal is notable for anything, it’s a lack of ambition. So far, it involves the redistribution of 10,000 migrants – a drop in the ocean compared to the numbers that continue to arrive on Italy’s shores. What’s more, the deal is entirely voluntary, side-stepping the earlier controversial plans to impose migrant quotas on all EU member states.
It’s a far cry from Merkel’s audacious decision to take in tens of thousands of migrants back in 2015. And it shows that, while the EU continues to espouse its open border ideology, it is quietly facing up to the fact that open borders between member states remain politically unpalatable.
Even during this latest round of talks in Malta, Macron has stated that he will only accept asylum seekers fleeing war as opposed to economic migrants. This should come as no surprise; despite receiving the third highest number of asylum applications of all EU states, France is 26 out of 28 when it comes to the number of these applications it accepts.
Macron wants to have his cake and eat it: he likes to capitalise on the liberal credentials that come from championing open borders, all the while remaining in control of his country’s population and resources.
The fact that Macron is even being permitted to draw the distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants shows how much the terms of the debate have shifted: in 2015, it was seen as tantamount to racism to distinguish between different kinds of migration: regardless of whether they were fleeing war or in search of better economic prospects, it was seen as the duty of all member states to accommodate the arrivals.
And yet one gets the impression that, if a leader like Salvini were drawing this distinction, his words would labelled populist and right-wing. Countries like France can accept or reject migrants from the safety of political summits; they don’t have to deal with the optics of leaving boats stranded out at sea. And yet, in reality, there’s little difference on the ground between Salvini’s immigration stance and Macron’s.
It’s no wonder, then, that Salvini was so keen to goad Macron with his support of the Gilets Jaunes. His neighbour has done almost nothing to lessen the burden that the migrant crisis has placed on Italy and yet turned its nose up at Salvini’s repeated stand offs with ships of migrants arriving at Italian ports.
Time and again, the EU uses the weaker economies of its member states to prop up the liberal ideals of the wealthier members. It is Italy, not France, that is shouldering the burden of the migrant crisis – something that Macron seems in little rush to change. The Italian electorate’s embrace of Salvini has forced the EU to think again about how it shares the burden of migrants and it has even shifted the rhetoric of the debate onto what sort of migration should be prioritised. But it won’t solve the crisis. If anything it has underlined the inequality that exists within the EU, with wealthier states being able to pick and choose between migrants while poorer economies are left to accommodate the rest.
A lot rests on an agreement being reached on Monday: the EU needs to satisfy the Italian electorate that their new government can make more progress than Salvini did in dealing with the crisis. And yet the terms of the agreement are weighted so heavily in favour of the richer nations that Italy and Malta are bound to leave feeling short changed.
Macron's approach to migration is a masterclass in hypocrisy