http://www.iol.co.za/news/africa/curb-migrants-for-more-aid-eu-to-africa-1.1944027#.VkQGa_mrSUl
Curb migrants for more aid: EU to Africa
November 11 2015 at 09:42pm
By Alvise Armellini and Alexandra Mayer-Hohdahl
REUTERSLeaders of the European Union and their African counterparts
stand on the steps of the office of Malta's Prime Minister Joseph
Muscat during the opening ceremony of the Valletta Summit on Migration
in Valletta, Malta. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi
Valetta - The European Union was trying Wednesday to secure African
help to control migration flows, offering in return billions of euros
in development aid, at a two-day summit in Malta.
One of the most controversial aspects at the EU-Africa talks was a
demand that African nations agree to take back failed asylum seekers,
economic migrants and other migrants with no legal rights to stay in
Europe.
In an opening speech, EU President Donald Tusk said it was “essential”
to make progress on the issue, even through forced deportations, to
allow the bloc to “keep the doors open” for genuine refugees and legal
migrants.
But Senegalese President Macky Sall said it was “difficult” to take
such a tough approach towards people “who have often braved death,
crossing the desert and the Mediterranean, in really horrendous
circumstances.”
“We should have a frank discussion, see which ones can be legalized
and then, for the others, we will see, depending on the agreements we
have with the EU, what is the best way to handle this issue,” he
added.
Europe is grappling with the biggest refugee crisis since World War
II. In the first nine months of the year, EU governments have received
more than 1 million asylum applications, but such numbers pale in
comparison with Africa's refugee burden.
Even though most EU-bound refugees hail from Syria, Afghanistan and
Iraq, and enter via Greece and the Western Balkans, stemming migration
from Africa is an important priority for the 28-member bloc.
“The attitude we're trying to adopt here is a more for more approach,
in the sense that, yes there has to be more aid to these countries,
but these countries have to also get their act together,” Maltese
Prime Minister Joseph Muscat said.
In remarks that followed a ceremony in which leaders observed a
minute's silence for dead migrants, Muscat said African countries
should “make sure they are not aiding in a complacent manner” migrant
traffickers.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel - whose country is taking in the
biggest number of refugees in Europe - said her continent wanted an
“amiable” relation with Africa “in which, in addition to aid, clear
demands and expectations are formulated.”
The EU has tried to push the idea of setting up migrant processing
centres in transit countries like Niger, but diplomats said the
proposal had not made much inroads amid a strong African pushback.
“There is no consensus related to this issue,” Egypt Foreign Minister
Sameh Shoukry told reporters.
The main result of the summit was expected to be the launch of a
1.8-billion-euro (1.93 billion dollars) fund to tackle the root causes
of migration, such as poverty. EU governments have been asked to pour
a further 1.8 billion euros into it.
“The fund on its own cannot cover all the needs, because the needs are
enormous,” said Niger President Mahamadou Issofou, adding that Africa
also needed fairer trade relations with European parters.
The EU was also expected to promise to slightly open its borders to
selected categories of Africans, such as students and researchers. The
bloc's foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said proposals would
“come in the next months.”
Human rights groups criticized Europeans for focusing too much on
security aspects, and expressed concern at the implications of
cooperating with countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, like
Eritrea or Sudan.
“The EU seems intent on using African governments as proxy
gatekeepers, and the Valletta summit may result in new agreements that
[...] only focus on border control,” Matteo De Bellis of Amnesty
International said.
After the summit, EU leaders were due to stay on in Valletta for more
intra-bloc talks on migration, amid slow progress on the
implementation of burden-sharing initiatives approved two months ago.
They include a commitment to move 160 000 asylum seekers from Greece
and Italy to elsewhere in the bloc over two years. So far, this has
happened for only 147 people, according to data from the European
Asylum Support Office.
“The biggest problem that we have at the moment [in the EU] is that
too much is being promised and too little is being delivered,”
European Parliament President Martin Schulz said in a dpa interview.
In a move expected to create new tensions, Germany decided Tuesday to
no longer unconditionally accept Syrian refugees, but return them to
the first EU country they set foot on, as stipulated by bloc rules
seen as increasingly hard to enforce.
Received on Wed Nov 11 2015 - 22:26:28 EST