Italy has borne the cost of policing the migrant waterways of the Mediterranean, in order to save lives, then to allow those saved to try to find a future elsewhere in Europe. That policy no longer operates.

More than 130,000 migrants have been rescued in the Mediterranean so far this year. The Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) operation, launched by the Italian government in October 2013 after 600 refugees from Syria and Eritrea died in two shipwrecks off the Italian coast, is designed to intercept migrant boats before they hit trouble. It involves personnel, units and aircraft from the Italian navy, army, air force, carabinieri, customs, coast guard and police. Thanks to this unprecedented deployment, all migrant boats intercepted off the Libyan coast have been rescued and their passengers brought to Italian ports, in Sicily or on the mainland.

The number of migrants has dramatically increased in the last few months, and 2014 has been a record year: the 133,000 arrivals by October soared past the previous 63,000 peak of 2011, when the revolution in Tunisia and war in Libya forced many to flee. There are many reasons: instability and war in the countries of origin, as well as worsening insecurity in Libya, which has almost no functioning central government — real power is in the hands of militias. Most migrants leave from Libya, which has again become the main point of departure for Europe. They are mainly asylum seekers from Syria, Mali, northern Nigeria and Eritrea. This is radically different from the past, when economic migrants mingled with asylum seekers. The change is a clear sign that the recession in Europe is modifying migration: the European Union is far less attractive to migrants who can choose alternative destinations.

In the last few months the Italian government has radically changed its policy on the management of arrivals. After the former prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, and the late Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, signed a friendship, partnership and cooperation treaty on 30 August 2008, the Italian navy was ordered to push back all migrant boats intercepted in the Mediterranean. Between 2009 and 2010, this brought down arrivals almost to zero. The navy stopped every boat and returned all passengers to the point of departure, without identifying them or verifying whether they were potential asylum seekers. The policy was discontinued during the Libya war, when Italy joined the NATO-led coalition against Gaddafi, and was condemned by the European Court of Human Rights in February 2012. After Gaddafi was overthrown, the Italian government tried to strike deals with the new Libyan rulers, to prevent would-be migrants from leaving. That has not been easy, since Libyan rulers have proven unable to wield any real power.

‘We need Europe to help us’

The tragedies in October 2013, and especially that on 3 October near Lampedusa, were a turning point — 366 bodies were recovered and brought to a hangar on the tiny Sicilian island, an image that was broadcast globally. The then prime minister, Enrico Letta, decided to launch unilaterally the Mare Nostrum operation, “not to allow these tragedies to happen again”.

Many deaths have been avoided, but casualties have not stopped: since January 2014, at least 3,000 migrants have perished at sea according to UNHCR estimates. “This number would be much higher without the Mare Nostrum operation,” says Luigi Ammatuna, mayor of the port town of Pozzallo, where rescued migrants are often disembarked. “We can’t cope alone with this huge number of arrivals. We need Europe to cooperate and help us with means and money.”

All along the Sicilian coastline, in ports normally populated more by tourists than by refugees, local authorities are asking for help from the central government and Brussels. “Sicily is not just the border of Italy. It is the border of the European Union,” says Enzo Bianco, mayor of Catania and former interior minister. “The EU should help us with the patrolling and with the processing of the asylum seekers coming to Italy. All these people use Italy as a gateway to the EU. They don’t want to stay here. They want to go further north.”

The rescue operations cost Italy around €9m every month. Italy has so far sustained this financial effort alone for a year, but it has repeatedly called for more help from the EU. For a long while now, Brussels has played for time without responding.

Italy has not identified migrants, and has encouraged them to go on to other European countries, violating EU regulations. According to European law, migrants arriving in Italy should be fingerprinted and, if they are asylum seekers, urged to submit their application there. The Dublin convention states that asylum seekers must remain in the first European country they enter, to discourage them from shopping around. This system allows northern European countries to deport migrants to Europe’s southern border countries where they first entered the EU. But these countries have a very poor welfare system for migrants, who end up sleeping in the street, in slums or in squats on city outskirts.

So all migrants arriving on Italian shores try to skip identification and go further north. The Italian government, overwhelmed by the number of arrivals and by the need to cater to their most urgent needs, is not keen on the lengthy identification process. So it has been turning a blind eye: among the 13,000 Eritrean citizens who arrived in Italy between January and May 2014, only 190 applied for asylum, less than 2%. For the Syrians, there were 170 claims out of 6,620 arrivals.

A silent diplomatic row

The European Commission (EC) wasn’t happy with Italy’s failure to comply with European laws but rarely mentioned it. The EC praised Italy for saving lives but did not seem ready to take over Mare Nostrum and transform it in a EU-funded cross-border project. The EC warned Italy that it wanted migrants identified, but did not threaten sanctions. The Italian interior minister, Angelino Alfano, said that without more support from the EU he might authorise asylum seekers to travel to other parts of Europe (though he had done that already).

This silent diplomatic row went on for months, until Italy took over the EU rotating presidency on 1 July 2014, when it asked louder for EU cooperation in the rescue, and made it clear it was willing to reduce and discontinue the Mare Nostrum operation. Italy also became a little more diligent in complying with EU regulations, and in September started to identify and fingerprint migrants. In an implicit exchange, the EU involved Frontex, the border agency based in Warsaw, in a patrolling operation, Triton, to protect the European border. This has nothing to do with Mare Nostrum, which is a search and rescue operation. But it gave Alfano, the excuse to announce that Mare Nostrum operations would be discontinued by 1 November and replaced by Triton.

This new shift seems a return to the old ideas: use all means to prevent migrants and asylum seekers from coming to Europe, make immigration difficult if not impossible, and eventually criminalise it. After Italy took over the EU presidency, the EU launched a major Europe-wide operation, from 13 to 26 October, against “irregular immigrants”: under Mos Maiorum (“the way of the elders”), national police forces tried to identify and catch as many illegal migrants as possible to deport them back home. The name of the operation implies that foreigners are outsiders, and that the EU should defend itself against invasion.

The shift in policy seems to be the result of a comprehensive European agreement between all the member states. Italy, which had gone too far in launching Mare Nostrum, was called to order and complied. The silent row between Rome and Brussels seems to have ended. With Italy again identifying those who land, and with Frontex involved in a small patrolling operation, everyone is happy, except for asylum seekers, whose death rate will increase.

Irrational reactions

This policy change is not surprising, but raises questions. Why have other EU member states not been ready to share the burden of receiving migrants? Why are they so keen on the Dublin convention? Do 133,000 asylum seekers represent a threat to a 500 million-strong continent? The “migration issue” stirs up irrational reactions, linked to a fear of invasion. When 1,000 Tunisians arrived in Lampedusa in 2011, the Italian government granted them six-month residence permits, which enabled them to travel within the EU. France then decided to unilaterally suspend the Schengen Treaty and reinstate police controls at the Ventimiglia border crossing to prevent them from entering; 15,000 people managed to freeze, temporarily, a treaty of free circulation that is one of the milestones of recent European history.

These fears have surfaced at every recent enlargement of the EU. Between 2004 and 2007, 12 new member states joined — including eight former communist countries. Many countries had reservations about this quick accession process, and many political forces played on the fear of massive immigration; in 2005 the referendum campaign in France on the European constitution was dominated by the “Polish plumber” who would steal the job of his costlier French counterpart. He never arrived in France, and neither did many other citizens expected from eastern European countries. When Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU on 1 January 2007, their citizens were subjected to restrictions: in nine countries — including France, Britain and Belgium — they had to apply for a work permit. When this was lifted on 1 January 2014, there was no flood of arrivals.

Turkey’s prolonged EU accession process dates back to 1963. Turkey filed a request to become a member in 1987. The then 12 member-state Union has grown to 28 states, but Turkey is still waiting. It has been argued that Turkey does not geographically belong to the “European area”, but in fact there are many in the EU who don’t want 75 million Muslims to become European citizens.

How does Europe define itself? Is it a Christian entity? What is European identity, and does it even exist? Europe’s citizens see themselves as Italians, Spaniards, French or Germans or Britons, more than as Europeans. Those citizens see the EU as a group of bureaucrats imposing austerity plans from Brussels, not a supranational body of people sharing values and history.

Since European identity is weak and ill defined, it cannot be inclusive; any novelty is a threat, as with Turkey, and also perhaps with Mediterranean migrants. We can feel sorry for their fate but see them more as a cost than as a resource. We have helped them, because “we can’t leave people dying at sea,” as the Italian prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has said. But they are mostly young, sometimes brilliant, people determined to find a better life. Why can’t we consider them as an opportunity to help Europe broaden its perspectives?