Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

Breaking Europe’s Migration Paralysis

Joschka Fischer 24th August 2015

Joschka Fischer

Joschka Fischer

For many centuries, Europe was a continent plagued by wars, famines, and poverty. Millions of Europeans were driven to emigrate by economic and social deprivation. They sailed across the Atlantic to North and South America, and to places as far away as Australia, to escape misery and seek a better life for themselves and their children.

All of them were, in the parlance of the current immigration and refugee debate, “economic migrants.” During the twentieth century, racial persecution, political oppression, and the ravages of two world wars became the predominant causes of flight.

Today, the European Union is one of the world’s richest economic regions. For decades, an overwhelming majority of Europeans have lived in peaceful democratic states that uphold their fundamental rights. Europe’s own misery and migration has become a distant (if not entirely forgotten) memory.

And yet many Europeans feel threatened once again, not by Russia, which is aggressively pushing outward against its neighbors, but by refugees and immigrants – the poorest of the poor. While hundreds of boat people have drowned in the Mediterranean Sea this summer, voices have emerged in almost every corner of Europe, 26 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, calling for isolation, mass deportations, and the construction of new walls and fences. Throughout Europe, xenophobia and open racism are running rampant, and nationalist, even far-right parties are gaining ground.

At the same time, this is only the beginning of the crisis, because the conditions inciting people to flee their homelands will only worsen. And the EU, many of whose members have the world’s largest and best-equipped welfare systems, appears to be overwhelmed by it – politically, morally, and administratively.

This paralysis creates a significant risk for the EU. No one seriously believes that individual member states – particularly Italy and Greece, the two countries most affected – can overcome the long-term challenges posed by large-scale migration on their own. But many member states reject a common European effort, a stance that threatens to accelerate the erosion of solidarity within the EU and reinforce the current trend toward disintegration.

There are three distinct causes of the current migration to Europe: the Western Balkans’ continuing economic malaise; the turmoil in the greater Middle East; and Africa’s civil wars and conflicts. Intensification or expansion of the war in eastern Ukraine would quickly add a fourth cause of flight.

In other words, all of the migration that Europe currently faces is rooted in grave crises in its own neighborhood. And yet the EU can do little to address any of them. Clearly, the EU must substantially strengthen its Common Foreign and Security Policy, including the European Neighborhood Policy, in order to address more effectively the causes of migration at the source. Perhaps the only failure more glaring than the member states’ refusal to back such reforms is their own failure to act, not least because it has created a legitimacy vacuum that xenophobic populists are now filling.

Given its foreign-policy weakness, Europe can have only a minor impact on the wars and conflicts ravaging Africa and the Middle East (though its influence, however small, should be used and developed). The Western Balkans, however, is a different story. Croatia is already an EU member; Montenegro and Serbia have begun membership negotiations; Albania and Macedonia are accession candidates; and Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are potential candidates. Here, the EU has considerable influence.

Why the EU has not become more engaged in the Western Balkans – a region where it can make all the difference by supporting economic and administrative modernization and infrastructure projects to link the region to the Union’s industrial centers – remains the secret of the European Commission and the member states. The absurd result, however, is that citizens from EU candidate countries are subject to asylum procedures, because no possibility for legal immigration to the EU exists for them.

One special case is that of the Roma, a large minority in the Western Balkans whose members often confront vicious discrimination. This is a pan-European problem. The Roma suffered disproportionately after the collapse of communism in 1989, as they worked largely in unskilled industrial jobs that were the first to be cut. Indeed, many of them – current or future European citizens – have fallen back into deep poverty. Continuing discrimination against them constitutes a Europe-wide scandal, and the EU, its member states, and candidate countries need to address it.

This summer’s refugee crisis highlights another – and much larger – structural problem in Europe: demography. As European populations age and shrink, the continent urgently needs immigration. Yet many in Europe strongly oppose immigration, because it also means social change.

In the long run, policymakers will have to explain to their people that they cannot have economic prosperity, a high level of social security, and a population in which pensioners place a growing burden on the economically active. Europe’s labor force must grow, which is just one reason why Europeans should stop treating migrants as a threat and start viewing them as an opportunity.

© Project Syndicate

Joschka Fischer 1
Joschka Fischer

Joschka Fischer was Germany’s foreign minister and vice-chancellor from 1998 to 2005 and a leader in the German Green Party for almost 20 years.

You are here: Home / Politics / Breaking Europe’s Migration Paralysis

Most Popular Posts

Russia,information war Russia is winning the information warAiste Merfeldaite
Nanterre,police Nanterre and the suburbs: the lid comes offJoseph Downing
Russia,nuclear Russia’s dangerous nuclear consensusAna Palacio
Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto

Most Recent Posts

Russia,journalists,Ukraine,target Ukraine: journalists in Russia’s sightsKelly Bjorkland and Simon Smith
European Union,enlargement,Balkans EU enlargement—back to the futureEmilija Tudzarovska
European Health Data Space,EHDS,Big Tech Fostering public research or boosting Big Tech?Philip Freeman and Jan Willem Goudriaan
migrant workers,non-EU Non-EU migrant workers—the ties that bindLilana Keith
ECB,European Central Bank,deposit facility How the ECB’s ‘deposit facility’ subsidises banksDavid Hollanders

Other Social Europe Publications

strategic autonomy Strategic autonomy
Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

WSI European Collective Bargaining Report 2022 / 2023

With real wages falling by 4 per cent in 2022, workers in the European Union suffered an unprecedented loss in purchasing power. The reason for this was the rapid increase in consumer prices, behind which nominal wage growth fell significantly. Meanwhile, inflation is no longer driven by energy import prices, but by domestic factors. The increased profit margins of companies are a major reason for persistent inflation. In this difficult environment, trade unions are faced with the challenge of securing real wages—and companies have the responsibility of making their contribution to returning to the path of political stability by reducing excess profits.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The future of remote work

The 12 chapters collected in this volume provide a multidisciplinary perspective on the impact and the future trajectories of remote work, from the nexus between the location from where work is performed and how it is performed to how remote locations may affect the way work is managed and organised, as well as the applicability of existing legislation. Additional questions concern remote work’s environmental and social impact and the rapidly changing nature of the relationship between work and life.


AVAILABLE HERE

Eurofound advertisement

Eurofound Talks: housing

In this episode of the Eurofound Talks podcast, Mary McCaughey speaks with Eurofound’s senior research manager, Hans Dubois, about the issues that feed into housing insecurity in Europe and the actions that need to be taken to address them. Together, they analyse findings from Eurofound’s recent Unaffordable and inadequate housing in Europe report, which presents data from Eurofound’s Living, working and COVID-19 e-survey, European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and input from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents on various indicators of housing security and living conditions.


LISTEN HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The summer issue of the Progressive Post magazine by FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to the importance of biodiversity, not only as a good in itself but also for the very existence of humankind. We need a paradigm change in the mostly utilitarian relation humans have with nature.

In this issue, we also look at the hazards of unregulated artificial intelligence, explore the shortcomings of the EU's approach to migration and asylum management, and analyse the social downside of the EU's current ethnically-focused Roma policy.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube