If it is against migrants, Europe will fail humanity

In today’s crisis talks on the boat tragedies, the EU must resolve to rescue those in peril on the sea

April 24, 2015 12:36 am | Updated November 17, 2021 11:07 am IST

Polly Toynbee

Polly Toynbee

Today Europe faces a primal test. As leaders meet in Brussels to discuss the bodies floating in the Mediterranean, they should look across the table and ask themselves what being European means. The reason so many hurl themselves recklessly at our rocky southern shores is because we are a haven of civilisation, where peace and law prevail, human rights are mostly observed, mercy is valued and murder punished.

Europe may lose that reputation if it becomes primarily a fortress, ignoring the age-old humanitarian lore of the sea that long predates human rights laws. But ahead of today’s meeting, the head of Frontex, the EU border agency, said restoring search and rescue was not in his remit, or EU policy. The commitment is to double funding in 2015 and 2016, and “reinforce the assets” of the existing Operation Triton and Operation Poseidon border surveillance, which only patrol within 30 miles of Italy’s coast.

Like all the big questions, there is no satisfactory answer to what could become a mass movement of people out of the war-torn, employment-deserts of Africa towards the Mediterranean, with dreams of a new life in Europe. But the first answer must be to keep hold of first principles. People cannot be deliberately drowned because all of Europe’s decent political parties lack the moral spine to face down their xenophobic fringes. Standing together in absolute refusal to let people die has to be the starting point and the end point today.

First solution: stop the panic. So far numbers are not massive — 1,50,000 made it to Italy last year (3,500 dead on the way) — numbers easily absorbed within the EU’s 28 nations. Second rule: don’t lie about what can be done. David Cameron learned to his cost about over-promising on immigration. The idea, in the draft summit statement, that just 5,000 selected refugees can be screened and dispersed while the rest are sent back is fantasy. Without papers, it’s often unclear where people come from, countries won’t take them and the cost of locking them up and then putting them on planes with four security guards each is prohibitive.

By all means try everything being proposed. Former SBS man Paddy Ashdown wants to send in the gunboats to destroy Libyan traffickers’ boats. But that act of war needs UN approval, and will he blow up every fishing smack along the African coast? Patrolling did deter Somali pirates, but there is no law that prevents large numbers of law-abiding people being in boats at sea – that’s not piracy.

If there are answers, they are difficult, long-term and politically unsatisfying – helping Libya, Syria, Somalia and others towards peace, helping Africa towards prosperity, making deals to stop migration at its source – if there’s a government to deal with. Migration ebbs and flows with wars and Europe could do more, were it less politically weak and inwardly obsessed by recession. This may be another test the EU fails – but at least let it not fail in basic humanity.

Here at home, mid-election, the crisis shines a light on our politicians. Once it was plain the public were horrified by the deaths, Cameron and Nick Clegg backed off their original approval for stopping search and rescue. But Theresa May and Philip Hammond, both leadership contenders, say the risk of attracting more migrants outweighs everything else: let them drown as a lesson to Africa.

After Labour’s less than noble human rights record and its awful “Controls on immigration” mug, what a relief to hear shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper’s straightforward gut response calling for immediate restoration of Mare Nostrum: “The EU should do the basic, humanitarian thing and rescue those in peril on the sea.”

Hardly Christian, Nigel Farage said he’d pluck a few Christians from the sea, a mirror image of those Muslims who are reported to have thrown Christians overboard. The Sun gleefully let Katie Hopkins call for gunships against “the plague of feral humans”. As for the Eurosceptics, outside the EU how would we control our borders, once the rest of Europe stops holding people back at Calais and elsewhere?

So this is a test of essential values for all. Today, the EU looks into its heart and its purpose. If the answer to “those in peril on the sea” is to throw them back, let no Christian sing that heart-tug of a sea dirge ever again. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2015

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