Migration should not be a consideration in Europe’s engagement in Libya

As Europe scrambles to find a role for itself in deescalating the crisis in Libya, its key challenge will be its ability to separate its short-term interests in Libya with respect to migration with long-term strategic interests. The approach chosen so far to manage the situation in Libya is clearly not sustainable. And neither is Europe’s current migration policy, which has relied on Libya as its buffer.   "As Europe scrambles to find a role for itself in deescalating the crisis in Libya, its key challenge will be its ability to separate its short-term interests in Libya with respect to migration with long-term strategic interests"

It is no secret that EU’s funding to stem migration from Libya was diverted to support criminal activities that enriched and empowered militias; a dangerous strategy if the long term stability of Libya is a concern. This was not a secret to European decision makers either. The document leaked to The Guardian newspaper, dated 4 September 2019, which was a restricted EU Council report showed that EU officials were well aware of human rights abuses taking place in detention centers run by the UN-back Libyan government with whom Europe and Italy would go on to renew a deal to stem the flow of refugees and migrants from Libya to Europe’s shores in October 2019.

The EU continues to insist that its multi-million support to Libya is for the “protection and assistance of migrants, refuges and internally displaced people”. It also insists it is financing legal activities.

Through the deal with Libya, the EU has de facto externalized its refugee and migration flows to a country that is itself still searching for stability. But any long-term solution depends in fact on Europe. The EU’s system is broken and it needs to be fixed.

The truth is that no amount of money and deals will stem the flow of migration in the way Europe wants it. Even the best cooking pot will not produce food. In a recent survey conducted by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which explored the motives behind migratory flows from Africa to Europe, 41% of respondents originating from 39 African countries and who have migrated to Europe through irregular routes, said “nothing” would have changed their decision to go to Europe. In fact, only 2% said they would not have used irregular routes had they known beforehand how dangerous it was. Most of these respondents are young, between the age of 20 and 30. Most came from urban areas (85%). Most of them were more educated than the national average of their countries and half had employment prior to leaving earning wages that were higher than the national average of their respective countries.

Migration is aspirational. Even for Europeans, who per capita have more migrants across the world than Africans. In fact, more than twice as much (1.3% of Africans in 2015 lived outside of Africa compared to 3% of Europeans). 

Deterrence tactics are unlikely to stop flows. It is in fact delusional to think otherwise. Furthermore, Europe does not have an unlimited financial capacity to police its borders to stop all migrants from entering. Already, fortress Europe is costly. For the period 2014-2020, contributions to FRONTEX increased from €628 to €1 638 million. For the next EU multiannual budget, the proposal of the EC is to allocate €12 billion for the decentralized agencies supporting Member States including FRONTEX. This is over a 6-year period (2021-2027).

Compare that to the fact that the migrant smuggling business is estimated to be worth as much as US$ 10 billion or more per year, given that routes from West, East and North Africa to Europe alone and it becomes obvious that resources will not be the main solution.

It is a dead end.

Europe’s best bet would be to manage migration.

Some European governments are coming to that conclusion. Few have opted to introduce measures to manage migration. And it is working to their benefit. Germany is a good case in point. It benefited from intra-EU migration which boosted its GDP growth by an average of 0.2% every year between 2011 and 2016. It also benefited from the flow of refugees. As Germany is said to need 260 000 new migrants workers a year of which 146 000 non-European to be able to meet its labor demands, refugees and other migrants are an important source of such labour. In fact, 20% of refugees who arrived in 2015 following the crisis in Syria were integrated in the job market. That percentage rose to 35% by the end of 2018. Similar experiments with integration of labour and active mobility schemes were piloted by others like Sweden.

For African countries, it is also best to deal with countries and regions who have a more realistic approach – management rather than deterrence. One should not forget that migration is as sensitive an issue in some countries as it is in Europe. Except that the reasons are different. In March 2019, The Gambia introduced a moratorium on deportation of rejected Gambian applicants from the EU. The country argued that the EU has failed to respect the principle that returns should be conducted in an orderly manner which allows the country to better reintegrate returnees.

But there is a bigger issue: migrants are an important source of revenue for the country and the communities from which they originate. And no amount of development aid will be able to match such revenue, certainly not from the EU. In 2018, the continent’s official remittances inflows were estimated US$ 82.7 billion. As per October 2019, the inflows have already exceeded the US$ 86 billion mark. This far exceeds what the EU provides in aid to the continent – in fact 10X annually. In the case of The Gambia, remittances represent 13,5% of the GDP of the country. It is not negligible.

Structural cooperation on migration is not an impossible task as some might want to claim. It is possible. But we need to change the conversation and focus on migration management in a way that helps to clamp down on illegal activities and secures rights for migrants while opening legal pathways to promote global mobility that serves the economic interests of both Europe and Africa. Settling on that choice would also have the benefit of allowing all those concerned to refocus their attention on what truly requires strategic and long-term thinking, including in Libya.