Can the EU tame the migration tide?

Jul 7, 2008, 17:39 GMT

Cannes, France - The most famous story told of Canute the Great, king of England, Denmark and Norway in the early 11th century, is that he ordered the tide to stop.

His move was intended to prove that there are some things which not even multinational leaders can control.

But 900 years later, the European Union looked set to defy that lesson as the interior ministers of the bloc's 27 member states vowed on Monday to take control of the tide of human migration which is currently flowing into Europe.

'We are not turning Europe into a bunker, but we are steering migrant flows in the world,' German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said at informal talks with EU counterparts in a hall overlooking the Mediterranean waves in the French resort of Cannes.

The focus of talks was a 'pact on immigration and asylum' proposed by France and setting out a common EU approach to the two issues.

According to early drafts of the text, over 2 million migrants, legal and illegal, enter Europe every year.

The pact responds by calling on member states to 'organize legal migration ... combat irregular immigration ... reinforce border control efficiency ... create a Europe of asylum ... (and) create a global partnership with countries of origin and transit.'

While none of the proposals is new in itself, the pact, by bringing them together, aims at nothing less than control of every link in the migration chain.

But while diplomats say that the pact is likely to receive the green light from EU leaders at a summit in October, it is far from clear whether they will be able to put their grand idea into effect.

First of all, they must sell the idea both to the countries from which migrants come, and those through which they transit.

That approval is by no means assured. In late June, South American leaders called an EU deal harmonizing rules on returning illegal migrants 'shameful' and 'discriminatory,' leading diplomats to warn that it could be hard to convince international partners that the EU's far more sweeping migration pact is fair.

EU leaders will also have their work cut out to sell the pact's ideas to citizens of third countries, thousands of whom risk their lives every year in a desperate attempt to reach Europe.

Indeed, on the day the EU ministers met in Cannes, Spanish officials said that 14 African migrants were feared drown in a failed attempt to cross to Europe in an unstable boat.

The pact says the EU should try to improve domestic conditions in migrants' countries of origin and make it easier for them to send money home.

While that proposal is sensible in itself, it does not mention that the bloc has already committed some 23 billion euros (35.8 billion dollars) in development aid to Africa until 2013, but that migrant numbers continue to increase - leaving open the question of how much money it would take to make a significant difference in migration patterns.

While EU approval in October would not make the pact legally binding, it would indicate a strong political commitment from member states to take control of the migration tide.

The ministers meeting on the Cannes waterfront on Monday certainly had that commitment.

But with the tide itself showing no sign of turning, they may well end up finding that the lesson Canute demonstrated on a North European beach 900 years ago is just as valid in the South - and that there are some phenomena which not even EU policies can tame.