Europe’s Fear of Migrants Makes for Bad Foreign Policy
Paranoid about migration, the EU is an easy target for extortion by governments and militias.
European naval power is no match for them.
Photographer: Angelos Tzortzinis/AFP
The European Union has agreed to a naval deployment in the Mediterranean to enforce a much-violated arms embargo, announced in Berlin in January, against the warring parties in Libya. This new operation is in line with the declaration by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, at the recent Munich Security conference: “Europe has to develop an appetite for power.”
But Borrell has since clarified that the naval vessels could be withdrawn if they became a “pull” for migrants trying to reach Europe via Libya. Indeed, this fear was the reason ships have been withdrawn before, and was the main contention over this latest deployment. Europe, it would appear, loses its appetite for power when faced with rickety boats filled with migrants.