On one of the recent Fridays, another "tragedy of illegals" unfolded in Italy: the Italian coast guard rescued nearly 200 refugees, including 34 children, from a half-sunken ferry caught south of Sicily, near the island of Lampedusa. Just in June of this year, Italian border guards saved 2,600 people in this way. All are illegal refugees from African and Asian countries. Official Rome, having assumed the leadership of the Council of Europe, is increasingly demanding a joint, European solution to this problem. After all, Italian politicians emphasize, only one in four "guests" remains in Italy, the rest go on, "all the way to Berlin."
In the German capital, the German Interior Minister Otto Schily has to deal with them - it is he who is responsible for national and European immigration policy. This topic is one of the most "explosive" in a country with 8.9% of residents of foreign origin, which is one of the highest rates in Europe. And although the number of applications for political asylum in Germany decreased by more than 20% last year, amid mass unemployment and economic downturn, highly undesirable "showdowns" between immigrants and the local population could break out at any moment. And for Germans, this is a more painful issue than for anyone else - for quite understandable reasons...
That is why the Social Democrat Schily proposes solutions to the problem of illegal immigration that would rather be expected from conservatives or even representatives of the right wing of the political spectrum. For several years in a row, he has been pushing for the creation of a pan-European border protection agency that would be guided by pan-European principles for accepting and distributing refugees, as well as combating illegal immigration. In addition, such an agency should handle funds intended for "countries of origin" and "transit countries" - so that buses and ships with refugees not only do not reach European borders, but do not set off at all.
Just in June, the Italian ambassador to the EU, Umberto Vattani, in this regard spoke of Otto Schily as a "true European politician."
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, barely having established himself as chairman of the Council of Europe, has begun to implement some points of the "Schily program": by the end of 2003, the European Agency for the Protection of Borders of the Mediterranean countries should start operating. Much closer cooperation between the police and naval forces of these countries is envisaged. Italy itself has already reached an agreement with Libya on joint patrolling of the North African coast. In addition, Italy has committed to supply night-vision devices and trucks for patrolling desert border sections to the border guards of the "Black Colonel" Muammar al-Qaddafi, once hated in the West. In addition, 20,000 seasonal workers from Libya are to gradually receive permission to come to Italy for short periods as temporary migrants.
Otto Schily's assessment of the work of his Italian colleagues? "An example of excellent planning."
The unusually close interaction between the right-wing populist Berlusconi and the Social Democrat Schily is not something out of the ordinary in European politics. The classic party "palette" has long ceased to concern anyone in Europe, at least when it comes to immigration policy. Left- and right-wing interior ministers are discussing at the European level preparations for sending illegals back home using jointly chartered planes, as well as the creation of a pan-European file of illegal immigrants - measures that were unthinkable just a few years ago.
"Fortress Europe" - a phrase from the lexicon of far-right nationalists and extremists - has migrated into the vocabulary of those in power since impenetrable shadow and "parallel" communities of illegal immigrants formed and began to grow rapidly in almost all European metropolises. Since it became known about Islamic extremists who conveniently use the status of political refugees. "Protect refugees, send out deceivers" - that is roughly how Otto Schily envisions the new citadel, which from May 1, 2004 will consist of 25 "castle" countries. Specifically, this slogan means, for example, the adoption of precise regulations for the temporary reception and distribution among EU members of refugees from countries where hostilities are underway, so that the deplorable situation of the first years of the war in Yugoslavia is not repeated, when 320,000 refugees from Bosnia flooded into Germany, and not a single European neighbor was ready to share this burden with the Germans.
Since the beginning of this year, the Eurodac system has come into effect, registering and storing in a database the fingerprints of every asylum seeker. Thus, the submission of double and triple applications under different names and in different countries must be stopped. By the end of the year, pan-European criteria for accepting refugees are to be adopted. At the same time, the German government insists on the right to deny asylum seekers access to the local labor market - only officially recognized refugees should enjoy this right. On this issue, representatives of other EU member states exert considerable pressure on the Germans, seeking equal social rights for everyone. However, it is obvious that Germany, with its 4.6 million unemployed, cannot afford such luxury.
However, the "conservative" proposals of Social Democrat Otto Schily are nothing compared to the projects of an even more "left-wing" European government. The British Labour Cabinet believes that before refugees even get the chance to reach Europe, they should be transported to "protected zones" in their own countries. There they should calmly wait to see whether any European country will agree to accept them, and European interpreters and lawyers will be present in such zones for the proper filing of documents.
The refugee acceptance systems that have existed so far in Europe are failing one after another. They should not be overloaded with applications from all sorts of tricksters and rogues, the British say in support of their ideas. This assertion is backed by figures: out of the total number of asylum seekers, barely 3% are entitled to it under the current rules. Another 10-20% may receive "temporary refugee" status under the Geneva Conventions, because there is a real threat to their lives and health in their countries. All other "political emigrants" have not the slightest chance of being accepted - nevertheless they submit their applications, since the very fact of submitting gives them access to the European labor market, because legal channels for labor migration do not exist in any European country to this day. Our compatriots who intend to use the services of one of the many "intermediary" firms promising legal work in Europe should pay special attention to this fact...
However, let us return to our British friends. The idea of "protected zones," which initially also envisaged the creation of "transit camps" on Europe's external borders, has caused many verbal battles. It is considered to be completely contrary to the refugee acceptance system, since, in the opinion of many European politicians, it should deter immigrants from Europe. Human rights activists from Amnesty International immediately called it "inhumane," while European Union officials warn against "barbed wire in the name of Europe."
Nevertheless, the British intend, together with the Dutch, Danes and Austrians, to launch pilot projects of their immigration program in Africa, Asia and the Balkans before the end of 2003. A spokesman for the British embassy to the European Union called the countries participating in these projects a "new coalition of the courageous" - by analogy with the anti-Iraq coalition created by the United States. He considers Britain and its project colleagues to be "pioneers" showing the European Union the right path.
In the end, attempts to keep refugees in their countries have long been made at the UN level: the UN refugee agency UNHCR tries to first transfer them to neighboring countries rather than send them to Europe. UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ruud Lubbers believes that Europeans may "not understand" if, under the protection of the 1951 Geneva Conventions, ever more numerous flows consisting of smugglers and criminals begin to penetrate the Old Continent. His concept is called Konvention Plus - over the past weeks Lubbers chaired the first UNHCR meetings in Geneva, where emissaries of countries of origin and European countries agreed on the creation of those very "protected zones" in Third World countries. A UNHCR spokesman said these zones are intended to "save many refugees from the dangers of the journey to Europe and from paying tens of thousands of dollars to smugglers."
The European Commission also tries to contribute to the idea of keeping refugees away. Over the next four years, Asian and African countries are to receive 250 million euros - including for various economic and technical projects, as well as for modernizing their police forces. Needless to say, German Interior Minister Otto Schily welcomes these attempts to "regulate migration on the spot." He himself intends to develop several agreements with some Eastern European countries based on the Italian-Libyan agreements. With their help, he hopes to introduce, for example, quotas for seasonal workers arriving in Germany.
Germany does not particularly try to oppose even the British. "Let them do their pilot projects," Schily believes, despite his own refusal to participate in the "coalition" because certain provisions of the German constitution make such participation impossible.
Well, if neither the German Social Democrats nor the Italian populists dare to completely break the image of the European Union as a refuge for all the persecuted and needy, the British Labourites will do it for them. And all other Europeans will only be left to welcome the construction of the "European citadel" with relief.
Viktor LERNER,
IA Rosbalt