The Price of Hope: Traffickers Profit as Asylum Seekers Head for Europe

More than 150,000 refugees have landed this year on the Italian coastline, most of them hoping to continue north. As the EU struggles to find an answer, human traffickers are raking in billions.

Behind the La Grotta bar, Italy comes to an end. But a narrow road continues onward across the border into France, hugging a cliff above the sea. It is a bottleneck for illegal immigrants and traffickers.

All in all, more than 150,000 migrants and refugees have landed on Italy's shores nationwide since January and almost half of them -- more than 60,000 men, women and children -- were never registered in the European Union's Eurodac database. They have long since disappeared, heading north toward the rest of Europe.

There was an unwritten rule after the tragic shipwreck off the island of Lampedusa on Oct. 3, 2013, in which 366 people drowned: Rome sends naval ships and coast guard vessels into the Mediterranean as part of the "Mare Nostrum" rescue operation, but it lets most of the migrants continue northward without further ado, so that they will not apply for political asylum in Italy as the country of their arrival, as required under the Dublin II agreement.

But in late September, Italy changed course. In a confidential communiqué, which SPIEGEL has seen, Interior Minister Angelino Alfano ordered that henceforth migrants "always" be identified and fingerprinted. Alfano noted that various EU countries have, "with increasing insistence," complained that the immigrants are left to continue their "journey to northern European countries" without being challenged by Italian authorities.

Struggling to Find a Strategy:  Preferred destinations include Sweden, Germany and Switzerland, countries with social welfare and the possibility of political asylum. Italy, on the other hand, as confirmed once more by a Nov. 4 ruling by the European Court of Human Rights, cannot even guarantee suitable accommodations for asylum applicants. More than ever, the Dublin system is degenerating into a farce, with only about 6 percent of allasylum seekers in Germany actually being returned to the country where they first set foot in the EU.

Fortress Europe is currently struggling to come up with a new strategyto cope with the mass influx of migrants and refugees from Africa and the Middle East. Italy suspended its "Mare Nostrum" operation on Nov. 1, both to reduce costs and to spur a Europe-wide solution. Since then, ships have been patrolling off the Italian coast as part of the EU's "Triton" mission. But the mission is not tasked with rescuing refugees on the high seas. 

In the face of the worst refugee influx in decades, wealthy countries have "miserably failed," concludes Amnesty International, noting that only half of the $3.74 billion (€3 billion) in funds requested by the United Nations has been made available. Instead, the EU has opted to seal itself off. The results of the latest Europe-wide police operation, "Mos Maiorum," will be released on Dec. 11. Its main purpose was to investigate the destinations, origins, background and paths of asylum seekers coming to Europe.  Read More  at Spiegel