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Ajouter un commentaireThe crisis exploded on the night of 9th February. 400 people arrived in Lampedusa from Tunisia in the space of 24 hours : by 12th February there were 4 000. The agreement with Tunisia for the repatriation of illegal immigrants was suspended, as the Tunisian authorities failed to respond to Italy’s requests. The reality is that Tunisia lacks any recognised leadership, the new government is anything but stable (the new Foreign Minister resigned on 13th February) and one would suspect that they are not particularly interested in stopping the boats that are heading to Italy. Interior Minister Roberto Maroni was the first to give a warning : “We are on our own, Europe is doing nothing. I am very worried, I have asked for an urgent intervention by the EU as the Magreb is imploding. It is an institutional and political earthquake that may have a devastating effect on all Europe via Italy”. That was the start of a confrontation between Italy and Europe that exposed the lack of preparation and the weak points in the immigration policies of both Rome and Brussels.
Europe’s responsibility
Maroni confirms that the European Commission have not responded to requests from Italy for the rapid intervention of Frontex, for financial aid to help them deal with the emergency or as regards the European agreements of burden sharing. However the Commissioner for Internal Affairs, Cecilia Malmström, maintains that she has been formally in contact with the Italian authorities since 12th February, offering the support of the Commission. Frontex headquarters say that they did not receive any formal request for intervention from the Italian government until 15th February. What is certain is that Catherine Ashton went to Tunisia on the 14th February, announcing an EU fund of 17 million Euros to aid the transition to democracy in Tunisia ; the following day the European Parliament met in a plenary sitting to debate the crisis.
The intervention of the European Institutions seems somewhat overdue. But it is the reaction of individual Member States that really give cause for thought about the efficiency of Community policies : France says that it will not welcome a mass influx of Tunisians over its borders, as it does not want to endorse illegal immigration (the majority of Tunisian emigrants have actually said that France is their intended ultimate destination), but it will only assess several specific cases ; Austria and Germany have indicated that they do not intend to take in Tunisian refugees that arrived first in Italy, pointing out that the Dublin System requires an asylum seeker to apply for asylum in the first European State in which he arrives. It is obvious that as long as the Dublin System and a burden sharing system remain purely voluntary, they will neither be effective tools for coping with an emergency nor will they offer long term European solutions for dealing with asylum seekers in the EU. Crisis situations like those currently spreading across North Africa certainly cannot be dealt with and resolved by Frontex sending people back across the sea and patrolling the borders. Europe needs to assume responsibility and discharge its humanitarian duties, not only in response to an emergency such as this, but also and especially with regard to the “regular” influx of people in search of protection.
Italy’s responsibility
However, this does not absolve Italy of any responsibility. It is after all difficult to present Italy’s situation as a crisis to countries like Germany, who regularly see an influx of asylum seekers 10 times greater in number than that arriving in Italy. The right set-up, the right structures and the political will to integrate refugees are just not present in Italy : inadequate legislation forces them to live without any effective protection (for example, the case of 140 Somalian refugees who were forced to sleep in a dilapidated building in Rome brings to mind the fact that Greece has recently been condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for this very thing : an insufficient system for receiving refugees). The actions of the government show little coherence : Maroni has correctly acknowledged that the Tunisian crisis cannot be solved by sending people back, as the phenomenon behind this latest wave of boats docking on Italian shores is a social one. However, Italy’s Foreign Minister Franco Frattini pushed for the intervention of Frontex to stem the tide, demonstrating a complete lack of understanding of the bigger picture.
Quite simply Italy lacks the necessary structures and organisational capacity to respond effectively to emergencies : the arrival, entirely predictable, of 5 000 Tunisians has led to the collapse of the system for receiving refugees all over the country ; in the meantime, groups of immigrants leave the centres and disappear without trace ; the government is not able to cope with the Tunisian refugees arriving at the welcome centres, or indeed keep them there, and Berlusconi’s blitz at Lampedusa, intended to give the impression that the situation is under control, actually underlined the fact that, for the umpteenth time, his immigration policy has failed.
Unknown Libya
Especially lacking is a long-term welcome policy : according to estimates given by the Foundation for Initiatives and Studies in Multi-Ethnicity, Italy will see around 900 000 immigrants arrive from Africa in the next 20 years. It is unthinkable that the only policy for coping with this will be to send them back across the sea.
The lavish Treaty of Friendship with Libya, trumpeted as a success of huge proportions thanks to a considerable reduction in the boats full of immigrants arriving on Italian shores, is a clear demonstration of the myopia of Berlusconi’s government. Firstly because the Treaty has in reality only diverted the problem of immigration into Europe into other channels, as shown by the recent clashes on the Greek-Turkish border. But especially because the Treaty with Libya does not “protect” Italy, clearly, from all the other countries which border the Mediterranean.
If the political climate in Tunisia should need some time to stabilise, it won’t be long before the human traffickers organise a new channel for immigration from sub-Saharan Africa. In addition, the enormous financial cost of the Italy-Libya agreement is no guarantee against Gaddafi’s tantrums. In recent months, the latter has not hesitated to ask the EU for money, demanding a contribution of 5 billion Euros as a condition for not reopening the immigration routes via Libya. And, as soon as the scent of revolution started to blow across Tripoli, Colonel Gaddafi suddenly forgot all about his agreements with Italy and Europe. According to Italy’s intelligence services, “ the flood of illegal immigrants from Tunisia started spontaneously and out of the blue” but within several days human trafficking gangs were in control. Meanwhile, the “tunisian window” became “a political opportunity for the Tripoli regime”, especially in terms of it being “an internal social regulator”. In translation, way of funnelling out internal dissension, a flow of political prisoners, dissidents, opponents but also poor sections of the population. A flow that the Italian Intelligence Services warned the government about, but that the government preferred to keep quiet about . Exactly how, as Berlusconi has declared, the government prefers not to comment now that the riots in Libya have become explosive and hundreds of people have been killed or injured. The government cannot condemn the violence of Gaddafi’s regime, because, should it fall, the illegal immigration channel from Libya would reopen. A flood of desperate people, of truly biblical proportions.
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Lampedusa : così lontana, così vicina
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