After 20 years only stammer

Each landing of migrants on Italian shores sets off the usual refrain about Europe leaving Mediterranean countries to handle things on their own and that more should be done. Ignorance coupled by the old habit of passing the buck to Brussels, shared by all European capitals, don’t help identify the best solutions, nor does this attitude alleviate in any way the suffering of all those fleeing their countries out of desperation for the enormous burden borne by local communities, whose efforts aimed at ensuring support and reception are beyond expectation. Once the news is no longer on the front pages, the question is adjourned, until the next tragedy.In this issue there are at least four major profiles of policies and responsibilities that no matter how interrelated they may appear, are distinct profiles and must continue being so as they entail different measures and scenarios.The first regards integration policies of non-EU citizens, who live or legally enter the territory of EU countries and stay there for a more or less long amounts of time forstudy, work or family reunification. It should be remembered that the latter represent the large majority. They usually settle down, pay their taxes, support primary areas of our economies and our societies, have a home, send their children to school, consume, pray, are members of organizations, in short, they live their lives on our territories. We have gone a long way over the past ten years at European level (for in-depth coverage see http://ec.europa.eu/immigration/) but a lot still remains to be done in terms of adoption of policies. And this is true in many Member States.The second relates to asylum policies, linked to specific international conventions, on which also the EU has made remarkable progress, like developing a common European asylum system, on the determined initiative of Commissioner Cecilia Malmström, which will be fully operative by 2015 and should give a clear and common juridical protection to some 330 thousand asylum-seekers annually on the entire territory of the EU. Also in this case, each country must do its share.The third regards the complex question of irregular or illegal migration, linked to two specific issues: on the one side the flows of people fleeing from desperation and the foul traffickers of human beings who make a profit of human tragedies, on the other the European Schengen system that grants greater powers to the States in controlling external borders, providing for a set of compensation mechanisms – yet still insufficient – to countries on EU borders which for geographic reasons have greater burdens (such as Greece, Malta, Italy or Spain). More can be done as regards money transfers, but it can’t be expected that the officers in Brussels, or the Swedish, German or Belgian police do the work of our public security forces or our reception facilities, that are often laudable compared to less dignified examples in other European countries.The fourth – which is probably the more complex and strategic profile – pertains to the boiling point of an area, towards which Europe has been unprepared, absent and impotent for a long time. Having given up serious and long-term political planning for the African continent – that entails addressing old and new situation such as that of Somalia, Sudan or Mali – Europe is faced with the expulsion of the entire Arab Mediterranean front.. From the war in Libya, to the gradual decline leading to the outbreak of civil war in the largest country in the area that is Egypt, not to mention Syria, why be surprised that the "collateral effects" of such a situation include desperate people fleeing their home countries and only a small portion of whom – it should be remembered – are directed to wealthy Europe, passing from its Southern borders? One million children refugees from Syria alone, that’s the big picture, and not some dozen desperate people on the boats.From the failure of the Barcelona process to the never implemented Union for the Mediterranean, we’ve now reached the stage of the late stammering in a meeting of European foreign secretaries held a few days ago, divided between those in favour of war intervention in Syria and those who are against yet don’t know what to do other than call for undefined "political solutions"…In short, if we really want to address the human question, we have to start to engage in a serious, long-term commitment for the mare nostrum and the European continent. It won’t be easy, we have wasted 20 years, but there is no alternative.(*) president Various Interests Group – Economic and Social Committee