Europe’s Migration Coma Border controls offer a pause to contemplate more lasting action.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-migration-coma-1457106079
Ahead of one more “make or break” summit on Europe’s migration crisis on Monday, an unstated plan of sorts already seems to be going into effect: Sink the Continent’s system of borderless travel into a medically induced coma and hope the patient can heal itself during the snooze.
That’s the best interpretation as a growing number of countries impose border controls on frontiers that used to be crossed freely under the Schengen agreement for passport-free travel. The latest enforcers include Belgium along its frontier with France, and Austria and nine Balkan states that are trying to seal off Greece from the rest of Europe. They join Sweden, Hungary, Denmark and others in imposing controls of various sorts.
The aim is to contain the crop of Middle Eastern and African migrants currently in Europe where they are right now. Belgium wants to prevent them from decamping from Calais to the Flemish ferry port of Zeebrugge as they try to get to Britain. Austria and the Balkan states want to block the migrant path from the Aegean up to Germany. In recent days, thousands of migrants have piled up along the newly closed border between Greece and Macedonia. Border closures would deter migrants, especially those coming for economic opportunity.
It’s no coincidence European Council President Donald Tusk travelled to a nearly closed-off Greece this week to warn economic migrants to stay home. Europe faces a brewing humanitarian disaster as a result of the border closures, but perhaps less of one than would develop if migrants started appearing by the hundreds of thousands as the weather warms this spring.
One aim of Monday’s summit with Turkey will be to goad Ankara into accepting economic migrants who are deported from Europe. Speeding up the application of European immigration and asylum laws in this way would still leave Europe with the many thousands of legitimate refugees pouring out of Syria and Iraq, but discouraging economic migrants would take some of the strain off Europe’s already overloaded system. CONTINUE AT SITE
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