Migration issues debate – Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe

We have discussed the migrant issue at every meeting of the Assembly for several years now. And yet the numbers grew, the confrontations got worse, people continued to die and up to last week we were still talking. Failure to face up together to the challenges of mass movements of people has resulted in the collapse of the Dublin agreement, the abandonment of Schengen, the building of barbed wire walls and of even state sponsored violence, in an attempt to hold back the human tide.

The time for talking is over. 

Allowing the current unregulated mass arrival of migrants to continue without having in place an agreed comprehensive response means not only continuing misery and possible death for the migrants themselves, it will have a destabilising, and potentially catastrophically destabilising, impact on Europe.

It has already changed governments, and it will change more, and even the most stable democracies will struggle under the economic and social strain of unplanned, unmanaged, rapid population increases.

Somewhere between the extreme assertions that on the one hand we should open our borders to all comers and on the other that we should build walls to keep everyone out, lies a solution that is both ethical and practical. We know our obligations under the Geneva Convention and we must meet them. We must give at least temporary refuge to those whose lives are threatened and we must share that burden in a planned pre agreed way and not leave it to a few counties who by virtue of their geography are carrying an unsustainable burden. Within the EU the numbers being spoken of are in the thousands. Sadly the numbers fleeing for their lives are in the millions.

All the forecasts, including from the OECD, are that at least 1 million souls will seek to come to Europe every year for at least the next five years. If we spent weeks seeking agreement on the relocation of 120,000 I see little prospect, even with the best will in the world, of millions being absorbed without serious destabilising effects within Europe. We can of course take many more than we have agreed to date but we must also begin to work far more seriously in stabilising the countries from which the bulk of refugees are coming.

I fully support the EU decision to help the frontline EU countries with funding and with personnel to feed and to process migrants as well as the decision to provide aid to the camps in countries like Turkey and Lebanon. But part of the solution must also be the decision to strengthen our borders and to repatriate those who fail the asylum process. This may seem ungenerous but I believe we must do this if we are to meet our obligations to the millions now fleeing for their lives from war torn areas and who genuinely need our protection.

I would plead with all Council of Europe countries, as winter approaches, to play their part in giving aid to refugee camps and also plead with countries like Russia who are players in the Syrian conflict to bring their considerable influence to bear on stabilising the area so people can return to their homes.