Since the early 1990s, European countries have carried out a common migration policy. Efforts to keep migrants away from the EU's external borders are a crucial aspect of this. Visa requirements have been put in place for practically all poor countries. And a system of fines has forced airlines to turn away passengers without proper visas.
Patrols have been increased on the short sea routes (the Adriatic and the Strait of Gibraltar). For the last couple of years, this has been coordinated by the European agency Frontex. This border control hasn’t achieved its aim of reducing the number of illegal migrants but, instead, has led to migrants avoiding the border patrols and to the relocation of migration streams.
Technology
Still, policy makers are holding on to the dream that more technology will make illegal sea migration impossible. Spain has acquired a billion-euro detection system. It has only shifted migration to Italy, Malta and Greece.
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If these countries, in turn, also acquire such technology, it won’t mean a natural end to illegal migration, but will lead instead to a different operational strategy. Smugglers can use large groups of boats. If the coastguard discovers the group, they disperse, so one or two of the boats are apprehended and the rest can continue on their journey.
The increased border patrols have also had an unanticipated result, namely an increase in the number of victims of migration. If safe routes are cut off, potential migrants don’t simply stay at home – they just take more dangerous routes. More people are dying. Is Europe responsible for this? The short answer is: that is difficult to say, since Europe methodically looks the other way.
Dirty work
First, it must be established that the Mediterranean countries may be carrying out the dirty work, but the ones at a safe distance, like the Netherlands, bear equal responsibility for the consequences of European policy.
But now comes the real question. Suppose a new type of soundproof asphalt were applied to Dutch highways, which led to a greater chance of fatal accidents among people driving over 150km per hour. Is the Dutch government responsible for the rising death toll? Legally that is an interesting question. But policy-makers would obviously take into consideration both consequences: noise-reduction on the one hand and more fatal victims on the other.
Since border controls within Europe have been scrapped, the frontiers of the EU are said to be subject to combined protection by all EU member states. Dutch borders are thus also protected on the Mediterranean, based on a policy co-developed by the Netherlands, with the help of Frontex, which is partly financed by the Netherlands.
No reliable figures
Is there a connection between the EU's policy on border protection and the numbers of victims? We don’t know since the number of deaths is unclear. The table presented here (see below) is based on reports from the national media in the various EU countries. People who commit suicide in detention centers and the victims of the 2005 fire at Schiphol Airport have also been included in the figures.
But limited research, in which the table was compared with local media or city council figures, reveals that the numbers in the table must be multiplied by at least two or three. It is not at all difficult to get more reliable figures. People wash up daily on European coasts, and are registered in city statistics and cemetery records.
Moreover, washed-up bodies are carelessly treated. If a corpse is found in a canal here, there is an automatic investigation into whose it is and how it managed to get there. But dead migrants are buried as quickly as possible. This must not go on. There should be an effort to discover the identity of washed-up migrants and data (DNA, for instance) should be stored on behalf of relatives.
European countries should therefore do three things.
You can't look away
First, they should use the enormous technical and financial resources they employ to combat migration to identify victims as well.
Second, they must collect reliable data on the numbers of washed-up corpses.
And third, they must ask themselves whether there is a link between European policy and the numbers of deaths, and if so, look for ways to better handle the issue of illegal migration.
This is a modest conclusion, given the dramas that play out daily on our borders. Contrary to the impression created by European politicians, stricter border control is not part of the solution to the border deaths; it is part of the problem. If people die every day and if that has possibly to do with the policy employed, you can’t look away.
* Based on media reports, source: United Against Racism, Amsterdam. 2009 figures until May.
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