The recent situation has been vigorously and emotionally examined from the humanitarian and home security point of view, and many have pointed out the obvious shortcomings of Europe when it comes to making quick and crucial decisions. But should the grand relocation scheme for 160 000 asylum-seekers be approved, it would reveal a new dimension of structural weaknesses of the EU.
Forcefully assigning individuals to certain countries may prove difficult to implement in practice. Sure, the mechanism would partly take account of the economic power and the unemployment figures in Member States, but it is not difficult to understand that an asylum-seeker would have significantly different prospects in terms of career or standard of living in Germany or Sweden, than say, in Bulgaria or Hungary. Labour market conditions are vastly different, and so are public services provided to refugees.
The Commission’s idea is “encouraging” refugees to stay in their assigned countries by only granting them work permits and residence rights there. Put aside for a minute questions of fairness, freedom, equality and what all this says about the Schengen area, and try to approach it from a merely practical point of view. The argument is that people will have a choice between legality and illegality, and that should motivate them to stay in their centrally allocated country. But this is a choice they already have under the existing system, and they overwhelmingly choose not to be fingerprinted in the countries where they enter. Whilst it is obviously partly because those very countries have little interest in registering them under Dublin III, and because they are given practically no information by Hungarian or Greek authorities on what fingerprinting actually means for them; it is at least in part because they do not want to go to Hungary or Greece. They were forced to leave behind everything, and they arrived with the hope of being given a second chance to restart their lives. Having come this far, they do not want to be stuck in places that offer them no opportunities, and where they are made to feel unwelcome.
The mechanism would also miss a great chance in making the most of the much-needed workforce. Whatever the criteria might be for allocating asylum-seekers to a certain country, it will shed more light on the huge differences in Europe. An architect ending up working outside of his field in Portugal due to the country's sluggish construction sector is not good for the individual, it is not good for Europe, and it is not good for the Member State in question. Or will “taking account of their skills” mean the most highly skilled workforce ends up in countries that already have the strongest economy, essentially creating a centrally administered brain-drain? Either way, the European labour market will be made more rigid and less integrated, while this could also easily end in integration problems for disillusioned refugees.
But the problem is not with the plan, nor is it with integrating 0,03 per cent of Europe’s population. The problem is with Europe. Putting this plan into action would highlight the very same underlying fundamental problems that the Greek crisis did: the grand ideas and the great achievements of the European Union were built upon – and helped mask – the great differences in Europe. Our social systems, labour markets and salaries are nowhere near comparable or harmonised, and we are trying to implement a grand, primarily social and labour scheme without common social or labour policies, just like we tried to build a monetary union without a common fiscal policy. But the refugee crisis is yet another proof that the only way we can really tackle the challenges of the 21st century is by moving towards more harmonisation. No-one in their right mind could want countries in Europe to base their competitiveness on cheap labour in the long-term. This is simply not possible in a globalised world, where downward competition in labour costs will always come from developing countries: today from Asia, tomorrow from Africa. New Member States safeguarding their low pay levels as the core of their competitiveness is not a sustainable argument against harmonised social policies and minimum wages.
Many have warned of the problems a lack of agreement on the Migration Agenda could bring about, but the truth is that an agreement will reveal other ones that the EU needs to face. But this should be looked at as an opportunity rather than a problem, because addressing these issues is long overdue. Now Europe has a chance to do that. After all, the European Union has always evolved through crises. It’s time for more union in this Union.
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About the author
Máté Csicsai is a consultant at Dods EU Monitoring