UK rejects EU proposal for Australia-style asylum controls

Jonathan Lindsell, 10 March 2015

The home affairs commissioner, Dimitris Avramopoulos (Greece), has proposed to use EU offices in non-EU countries like Niger, Egypt, Turkey or Lebanon, to consider applications for asylum and refugee status from outside the EU. This seems to draw inspiration from the Australian policy of detaining and processing ‘boat people’ on Christmas Island, Papua New Guinea, and Nauru.

Theresa May rejected these plans on the grounds that ‘the idea of making it easier for legal routes to stop illegal routes is completely the wrong way’, but Avramopoulos’ proposal saw positive reception from France, Germany and Italy. Italy is the EU state that deals most with irregular migration from the Middle East and North Africa, but last year abandoned its Mare Nostrum programme of patrolling the Mediterranean for trafficking boats, arguing it was disproportionately footing the bill. Other nations are concerned – Germany has seen tens of thousands of Kosovars arriving to claim asylum.

The EU now runs a much more limited system, Triton, operating with one third of the boats and much smaller patrol ranges, to which Britain contributes neither funds nor naval assistance since even this search and rescue policy could be seen by prospective asylum seekers as a ‘pull factor’ towards Europe.

The UK already has a huge backlog of asylum claims, including 29,000 applications over seven years old. In a sense, Britain already has an ‘offshore’ system of its own since non-EU citizens are stopped at Calais, not Dover, in an agreement with the French authorities. The British government would also be keen to stop any additional slivers of border policy being included in the EU’s competences.

However the Lampedusa tragedy and continuing flow of hundreds of thousands of migrants across the Mediterranean, many dying, demonstrates the need for some kind of Europe-wide answer to the refugee problem. The detail will be difficult to agree. Avramopoulos’ plan would require the EU nations to agree to a quota or distribution mechanism to fairly share the influx, an influx to which many EU leaders are already hostile. Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister, rejects ‘throngs of people pouring into [Hungary]’. Anti-Islamic movements like Pegida are also likely to be critical.

On this proposal, anti-immigration politicians from the right may find allies from Europe’s left. The Australian situation is not often held up as a perfect model, since thousands of asylum seekers are kept in offshore refugee camps in allegedly poor conditions. For example, Amnesty International accused the Australian government of ‘spectacularly failing in its duty of care to asylum seekers’ at the Nauru ‘human rights catastrophe’. Australian offshore camps house under 10,000 people, but last year the EU saw over 200,000 irregular migrants. Presumably an offshore system would need to house and shelter them while their claims were processed, an expensive and risky prospect that would be politically sensitive, especially in the unstable locations suggested.

Under Europe’s current austerity drive, it is difficult to advocate the other possible solution: properly fund nation states’ asylum and refugee processes and border staff.