EU sidestep on migrants will do nothing to curb Mediterranean death toll

Four countries at Europe’s frontier will continue to bear brunt of crisis; refugees yet to make journey will still view sea as logical option
To misquote the first man on the moon: the EU’s new migration agreement is one small step forwards for European bureaucrats, and one giant leap sideways for mankind.

On the plus side, the decision by the majority of EU members to accept 40,000 asylum seekers currently in Italy and Greece is at least a start. With nationalism and xenophobia on the rise throughout Europe, the argument goes, the continent’s leaders were still brave enough to share at least a fraction of the Italian and Greek burden.

The agreement to welcome 20,000 Syrians and Eritreans who still lie beyond Europe’s borders is also seen as an important gesture. Resettlement has not hitherto been seen as a major role of the EU. But this move, amid the biggest global refugee crisis since the second world war, is a tiny admission that it might have to become one.

More worryingly still, the 40,000 asylum seekers due to be shared throughout Europe form only a small proportion of the 250,000 migrants likely to land in Greece and Italy this year. Thousands more will continue to arrive in Bulgaria and Hungary, two other EU states that are on the frontline of the migration crisis but which will not be covered by the scheme. So even if all 40,000 asylum seekers are successfully redistributed, the four countries at the EU’s border will continue to bear the brunt of what is essentially a European crisis.

Most significantly, the tiny number of refugees due to be resettled from outside the EU – 20,000 – will do nothing to curb the death toll in the Mediterranean. Time and again, refugees planning to make the voyage across the sea argue that despite the risks the Mediterranean is a more likely route to safety than the legal routes available to them. So few places are on offer to the four million Syrian refugees eligible for asylum from outside Europe (the UK has taken 187 so far) that the sea seems a more logical option. - Read More at the Guardian

EU sidestep on migrants will do nothing to curb Mediterranean death toll

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