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IMMIGRATION

Renzi blasts ‘anachronistic’ Austria over border plan

Italy’s Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has taken another swipe at Austria over its plans to reinstate border controls at the Brenner pass, saying its position towards the refugee crisis is “anachronistic”.

Published: 6 May 2016 08:36 CEST

Renzi blasts 'anachronistic' Austria over border plan

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi in Rome on Thursday. Photo: Alberto Pizzoli/AFP

“This is the wrong attitude even if there is a migrant crisis,” he said after a meeting with European leaders in Rome on Thursday.

With over 28,500 migrants arriving since January 1st, Italy has once again become the principal entry point for migrants arriving in Europe, following a controversial EU-Turkey deal and the closure of the Balkan route up from Greece.

In previous years, many migrants landing in Italy have headed on to other countries – but with Austria planning to reinstate border controls at the Brenner pass in the Alps, a key transport corridor, Rome fears it could be stuck hosting masses of new arrivals.

Italy is also pushing for Nato naval patrols off Libya in time for the summer people-smuggling season, and a deal with Libya on the model just concluded with Turkey.

Renzi stressed the need for “a strategy for Africa” to stem the influx from there.

He wants EU aid for African countries that have seen large numbers of migrants set off, in a bid to lessen the poverty that drives many of them to leave home.

“The important thing is to invest in Africa,” Renzi said.

But he added that Germany and Italy were in disagreement over how to fund the plan, with Germany against using eurobonds to offer finance to African countries.

Meanwhile, German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday urged European leaders to protect EU borders or risk a “return to nationalism” as the continent battles its worst migration crisis since the Second World War.

She said Europe must defend its borders “from the Mediterranean to the North Pole” or suffer the political consequences.

Support for far-right and anti-immigrant parties is on the rise in several countries on the continent which saw more than a million people arrive on its shores last year.

In Austria, Norbert Hofer of the far-right Freedom Party is expected to win a presidential run-off on May 22nd after romping to victory in the first round on an anti-immigration platform.

Merkel told a press conference with Renzi that Europe's cherished freedom of movement is at threat, with ramped-up border controls in response to the crisis raising questions over whether the passport-free Schengen zone can survive.

Renzi also hosted European Commission leader Jean-Claude Juncker, EU President Donald Tusk and European Parliament chief Martin Schulz at a debate about the state of Europe on Thursday.

During the discussion, Tusk said the notion of a “fortress” Europe was “absurd”, but that the EU had to protect its external borders if it wanted citizens to feel safe. He added that the idea of a single European state was “an illusion”.

Merkel, whose country took in more than a million asylum-seekers last year, insisted on the need to “respect the human dignity” of immigrants and to “share the burden” of the influx.

Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, in an interview with AFP, took a stance unusual among Central and Eastern European leaders in agreeing with her.

He pledged to accept Bulgaria's quota of 1,200 asylum-seekers under an EU plan, saying: “It does not matter if it is 1,200 or 2,000 people – we have taken a commitment to accept them.”

In Austria, far-right presidential candidate Norbert Hofer was meanwhile attempting to woo more mainstream voters by saying he believed it was possible to integrate migrants.

“I think that if we do everything we can to make sure the people who are already in Austria integrate themselves, it's still possible,” he told APA news agency.

With the German far right coming out on top in two state elections earlier this month, the socialist-led national Berlin government has reimposed border controls on Western frontiers that are supposed to see freedom of movement in the European Union’s Schengen zone.

The Netherlands government, which includes the party of Dutch far-right leader Geert Wilders, announced Wednesday that it had requested from Brussels an opt-out from EU rules on asylum, with Prime Minister Dick Schoof declaring that there was an asylum “crisis”.

Meanwhile, new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the left-wing Labour Party paid a visit to Rome for talks with Italian counterpart Georgia Meloni, whose party has neo-fascist roots, to discuss the strategies used by Italy in seeking to reduce migration.

Far-right parties performed strongly in June European elections, coming out on top in France, prompting President Emmanuel Macron to call snap elections which resulted in right-winger Michel Barnier, who has previously called for a moratorium on migration, being named prime minister.

We are witnessing the “continuation of a rightward shift in migration policies in the European Union,” said Jerome Vignon, migration advisor at the Jacques Delors Institute think-tank.

It reflected the rise of far-right parties in the European elections in June, and more recently in the two regional elections in Germany, he said, referring to a “quite clearly protectionist and conservative trend”.

Strong message

“Anti-immigration positions that were previously the preserve of the extreme right are now contaminating centre-right parties, even centre-left parties like the Social Democrats” in Germany, added Florian Trauner, a migration specialist at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, the Dutch-speaking university in Brussels.

While the Labour government in London has ditched its right-wing Conservative predecessor administration’s plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda, there is clearly interest in a deal Italy has struck with Albania to detain and process migrants there.

Within the European Union, Cyprus has suspended the processing of asylum applications from Syrian applicants, while laws have appeared authorising pushbacks at the border in Finland and Lithuania.

Under the pretext of dealing with “emergency” or “crisis” situations, the list of exemptions and deviations from the common rules defined by the European Union continues to grow.

All this flies in the face of the new EU migration pact, agreed only in May and coming into force in 2026.

In the wake of deadly attacks in Mannheim and most recently Solingen blamed on radical Islamists, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government also expelled 28 Afghans back to their home country for the first time since the Taliban takeover of Kabul.

Such gestures from Germany are all the more symbolic given how the country since World War II has tried to turn itself into a model of integration, taking in a million refugees, mainly Syrians in 2015-2016 and then more than a million Ukrainian exiles since the Russian invasion.

Germany is sending a “strong message” to its own public as well as to its European partners, said Trauner.

The migratory pressure “remains significant” with more than 500,000 asylum applications registered in the European Union for the first six months of the year, he said.

‘Climate on impunity’

Germany, which received about a quarter of them alone, criticises the countries of southern Europe for allowing migrants to circulate without processing their asylum applications, but southern states denounce a lack of solidarity of the rest of Europe.

The moves by Germany were condemned by EU allies including Greece and Poland, but Scholz received the perhaps unwelcome accolade of praise from Hungarian right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Moscow’s closest friend in the European Union, when he declared “welcome to the club”.

The EU Commission’s failure to hold countries to account “only fosters a climate of impunity where unilateral migration policies and practices can proliferate,” said Adriana Tidona, Amnesty International’s Migration Researcher.

But behind the rhetoric, all European states are also aware of the crucial role played by migrants in keeping sectors going including transport and healthcare, as well as the importance of attracting skilled labour.

“Behind the symbolic speeches, European leaders, particularly German ones, remain pragmatic: border controls are targeted,” said Sophie Meiners, a migration researcher with the German Council on Foreign Relations.

Even Meloni’s government has allowed the entry into Italy of 452,000 foreign workers for the period 2023-2025.

“In parallel to this kind of new restrictive measures, they know they need to address skilled labour needs,” she said.