All the doubts on “hotspots”

Hotspot areas “are starting to become operative” and “as of October 1st the first asylum-seekers from Italy and Greece will be transferred”: Natasha Bertaud, EU Commission spokesman, appeared reassuring few days ago explaining in Brussels that the European machine for the relocation of refugees is getting into motion. A complex problem, needless to say, because of the massive and growing flow of migrants coming from Africa and the Middle East, for the walls and barbed wire erected by various Countries, the attempts to create a core group on common migration policy under the direction of the European Union to overcome national resistance (and selfishness). The tools identified in this direction include hotspot areas, or “points of crisis” in the Italian version of the documents produced by the EU. “Processing” centres. “Hotspot areas” have a date of birth. In fact, they first appeared in the “Proposal” published past May 13 by the European Commission for all EU 28 Member Countries to address the migration crisis. Hotspot areas are conceived as “centres for the registration, identification, fingerprinting and debriefing of asylum seekers” in the Countries of arrival. The first thought goes to Italy, Greece, as well as Hungary. Frontline control centres will cooperate – according to the intentions of the Commission – with The European Asylum Support Office (EASO), EU Border Agency (Frontex) EU Police Cooperation Agency (Europol) and EU Judicial Cooperation Agency (Eurojust). National and EU staff will work on the ground to “sort out” the migrants: “Those claiming asylum will be immediately channelled into an asylum procedure. For those who are not in need of protection, Frontex will help Member States by coordinating the return of irregular migrants”. The Commission will mobilise an initial EUR 60 million for the creation of the hotspot areas. The burden on Sicily and the Apulia regions. The “exchange” between solidarity and responsibility announced during the EU summit finally takes shape. Moreover, those entitled to filing an asylum request are immediately identified in frontline Countries while so-called economic migrants (as if draught and hunger were less harmful than political persecution) are sent back to their home countries; in exchange the EU will redistribute 160 thousand people across those Member States who declare their availability. Community leaders put everything in writing, during the summit of September 14-22, despite the criticism and the defections of certain governments. But doubts on the hotspot areas increase. One should be created in Greece, in the port of the Piraeus; Hungary doesn’t agree, since it understands – and Premier Viktor Orban makes no mystery of it – that EU Countries that are not directly exposed to arrivals wish to put the greatest burden on external borders. In the meantime Italy is getting organized: last week “as an experiment” the hotspot in Lampedusa started to be operative; others should be set up by November in Pozzallo, Porto Empedocle, Trapani. Aslo Taranto (and perhaps Augusta) might host a “hotspot centre”. The entire burden is thus on Sicily and the Apulia, Italy’s southern regions. “Dangerous mechanism”. Suspicions were confirmed in Italy by Oliviero Forti, Caritas migration coordinator: “The forecasts contained in the European agenda on hotspot centres in frontline countries risks becoming a boomerang. Thousands of economic migrants and refugees will be ‘selected’ to identify those who can stay in Europe and those who will be repatriated. This not only entails excessively high costs for the interested Countries, notably Italy, but it’s also a dangerous mechanism that would constantly put human rights at risk”. Moreover, “the need to repatriate an increasing number of migrants entails the extension of first reception centres, and the opening of new Centres for Identification and Expulsion, which Caritas, Migrantes NGOs and other volunteering organizations are asking to shut down as in fact they have become detention centres. A new wall… The same view is shared by Fr Gian Carlo Perego, director of the Migrantes Foundation of the Italian Bishops’ Conference: “The creation of hotspots on the one side risks creating yet another network of large structures that pay little attention to individual needs, whilst limiting the right to migrate, especially of those migrating for family reunification purposes. Moreover, the need to accelerate identification procedures may entail a risk of simplification to the detriment of international protection and of the social protection of families and individuals”. For the director of Migrantes “this European change of direction is of great concern since instead of favouring identification and accompaniment in structures located across the national territory, with the increase of Commissions tasked with examining international protection requests, it triggers the creation of new tools that stop, mass together and fail to protect” migrating persons.