As rescue efforts in the Mediterranean Sea flagged last week, and bodies were found more frequently than survivors from among the more than 500 people missing after an overcrowded fishing trawler sank, the European Commission’s president was asked for her thoughts. “It is horrible, what happened, and the more urgent is that we act,” Ursula von der Leyen told reporters at the headquarters of the European Union’s executive branch in Brussels.
The priorities, she said, should be to help the authorities in Tunisia — where people bound for Europe sometimes leave from — to stabilise its economy and better manage migration, and to finalise the long-awaited reform of the EU’s asylum rules, which is unlikely to happen before next year. Never mind that the trawler left from Libya, or the admittedly slim chance that survivors might be found, or that the disaster might be the worst ever in the Mediterranean. Von der Leyen’s reply stood in stark contrast to the actions of a predecessor a decade ago.
Standing near the coffins of scores of drowned migrants, having travelled to the small Italian island of Lampedusa after the deaths of around 300 people in October 2013, then European Commission President José Manuel Barroso swore that such tragedies “should never happen again.”
In response, the Italian navy set up a search and rescue mission, but it was mothballed a year later over concern that it only encouraged more migrants to come. Fears of a creating a “pull factor” have dogged everything that the EU has tried to do since.
At a summit starting on Thursday, EU leaders will discuss von der Leyen’s plans. As countries like Austria, Hungary and Poland block any meaningful attempt to equitably share out refugees arriving in Greece, Italy, Malta or Spain, the work focuses by default on preventing migrants from entering.