The French president, Emmanuel Macron, is hosting a “major European powers summit” on Libya also attended by three African nations, in an attempt to raise more funds to tackle the migration crisis.
The EU has struggled to agree on a coherent answer to the influx of migrants fleeing war, poverty and political upheaval in the Middle East and Africa, and the crisis is testing cooperation between member states.
The mini-summit in Paris provides a chance for the major European powers to coordinate their Libyan policy after individual countries, especially France and Italy, started to mount separate initiatives to create political unity in Libya.
Macron wants the EU to offer an extra €60m (£55.5m) to help African countries handle asylum seekers who have returned from Europe and to prevent further migration flows.
Over the summer, Macron sought to take the initiative on managing the flow of migrants crossing the Mediterranean from Libya, mainly into Italy. He proposed hotspots in Africa to handle asylum requests.
European and African allies questioned the viability of such centres and an official from the Élysée Palace said on Monday the idea was no longer under discussion.
“The hotspots announcement was nonsense and neither Chad nor Niger were consulted beforehand,” a west African official said. “Macron is trying to make up for that mistake.”
Although the number of migrants reaching Italy from Libya by sea dropped by nearly 70% in July and August compared with the same months last year, it is felt the numbers could easily rise again without further measures.
There has been a small increase in flows from Morocco to Spain, a point of concern for the Spanish government dealing with sensitive public opinion in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Barcelona earlier this month.
The fall in the number of refugees leaving Libya raises questions about the management of the makeshift camps where those still seeking to reach Europe are being held either before attempting the perilous Mediterranean voyage or after being turned back by the Libyan coastguard.
The Paris summit is expected to propose a stronger role for the UN in the administration of the Libyan detention camps and endorse extra cash for countries such as Niger and Chad from which many of the migrants on the Libyan shoreline originate.
The four European leaders attending the summit are the Italian prime minister, Paolo Gentiloni, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, and Macron himself. The three African countries taking part are Libya, Niger and Chad.
The UK – despite leading the military engagement that led to the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and the subsequent power vacuum – is not among the attendees, a possible sign of Britain’s gradual marginalisation ahead of Brexit.
The foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, visited Tripoli last week, but the bulk of the diplomatic work on reaching a political solution in Libya has been left to the former colonial power Italy, or to France.
The political crisis in Italy over migration continues, with clashes at the weekend in Rome between migrants and police over living conditions.
The total number of migrants who reached Italy from Africa between January and 23 August this year was 98,072, according to the International Office for Migration (IOM), the UN migration agency, a fall of only 7,000 from the same period last year.
But this small drop masks a collapse of more than 70% in the number of migrants reaching Italy in July and August. The IOM figures show 14,177 African migrants reached Italy by sea in between 1 July and 20 August, compared with 45,000 over the same period last year. The figures for August alone are likely to show a fall of more than 75% on August 2016.
But the IOM estimates the number of people reaching Spain from Africa is starting to increase, exceeding 8,300 by 9 August, higher than the total number of migrants that reached Spain during the whole of 2016.
Although the Italian government is taking some credit for the sudden decline in the number of migrants reaching its shores, the fall appears to precede implementation of its tough measures, which include a restrictive code of conduct for NGO ships patrolling outside Libyan coastal waters, as well as stronger efforts by the Libyan coastguard to turn the smugglers’ rafts back. It is possible that changes in the power dynamics in key Libyan ports had already made it more difficult for the smuggling networks to operate.
The Italian government has been providing help to the political leadership in key ports such as Sabratha, west of Tripoli, and this in turn could be seen as an incentive to local militia to forgo people smuggling in return for western grants.
But the decline in numbers reaching Europe may lead to tens of thousands becoming stranded in camps in north Africa, with little oversight by the weak Libyan government.
The Paris summit will nevertheless welcome the NGO code of conduct, as well as measures by African countries to do more to police migration flows.
In a further sign that European leaders are starting to look at the root cause of the crisis, the Italian interior minister, Marco Minniti, met 14 Libyan mayors for a second time on Saturday to talk to them about their needs, including funds to ensure there were economic alternatives to human trafficking.
