“We are a political commission and we make political choices.” Last week, presenting the plan of the European commission on migration, Vice President Frans Timmermans strongly claimed the parameter used by the men and women of the Commission led by Jean-Claude Juncker when implementing their mandate. Timmermans told the truth indeed: the plan they’ve presented – which tries to extend article 78, third paragraph of the Treaty, as much as possible, is a strong political choice imposing on Member States’ governments to come to the fore and take on their responsibilities for the first time ever. So far the issue has been in fact vaguely considered, with generic “northern states” refusing to offer their solidarity to “southern states” facing a particularly tragic kind of migration day after day. Little has been done lately – nothing I’d say – apart from giving Frontex some more ships and men. Frontex is the European Union Agency for Borders: borders, not migration. Two strikingly different realities. True, migration is one of the issues Member States decided to keep at national level when writing the Treaties. The only “common area” is asylum, concerning people in need of protection, when it was established to allow every Member State to manage those arriving on its territory, even when that is just a way to rejoin the families these people have elsewhere in the Union.
There is no solidarity, no “European function” of migration. The Commission has now imposed on governments to take a stand: there’s a proposal on the table, an a qualified majority is needed to have it approved. That is to say, a ‘minority bloc’ is needed to stop it. There’s no unanimity, as stressed by the former Commissioner for Internal Affairs Antonio Vitorino (current President of the Jacques Delors Institute) and Yves Pascouau, research fellow at the European Policy Centre: “Member States such as Hungary, hostile to the project, should create a minority bloc in order to stop the proposal.” Two things are thus included in this decision: the possibility of binding Member States to certain choices, and the obligation for hostile members to come to the fore. This is politics, this is how a Union is managed.
Of course the ‘quota system’ could be rejected thanks to the creation of a minority bloc, but that would be the time in which precise political responsibilities could be finally identified, there would be something to discuss on, something on which it would be possible to create an answer which has to be created. Those deciding to join forces with Hungary are also actively working towards the reintroduction of death penalty: precise choices of which they will bear present and future responsibilities.
In case of approval, though, and this is quite likely (two or three countries such as the UK should be excluded by minority/majority fronts, given their opt-in/opt-out features), it will be the first time in which something would have been done. It could be working, it could open the door to future developments under the aegis of the “integration” of policies, even before the integration of people. It’d be a remarkable success.
Still, there’s something else in the whole project: military intervention (it would be that, nothing less) to stop smugglers. This concerns governments more than the Commission, and it is even more difficult to tackle. It will be unlikely for the UN to give the green light to a military intervention on Libyan coasts, says Rosa Balfour, senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund. What is the Union going to do then, given that it wants to act “within the framework of international laws” in a country where “laws” is a mere series of types? It could act alone, as it had already happened in the past, find a sort of agreement with that sort of government trying to control a portion of the Libyan territory (even this possibility seems unlikely, there are scarce possibilities of reaching an agreement without other under-the-counter deals appealing for Libyans).
Nothing could come of it, that’s the risk for the hypothesis of a military intervention led by Italian troops – the best outcome perhaps. Or, something could come of it, and the intervention could be started, risking the lives of civilians, triggering the reaction of those seeing western people as invaders. The cure could prove itself worse than the disease. Without stopping the smugglers.
