Some EU politicians seem to have an inexhaustible willingness to punish the powerless.
The EU has a deliberate “let them die” policy toward people drowning in the Mediterranean Sea. EU member states like Greece and Italy even criminalize saving lives on the open waters. The EU is complicit in torture of migrants returned to Libya.
At EU land borders like Croatia and Poland, the violence of national security forces is extreme. Yet, it gets a nod and a wink from Brussels, which refuses to uphold the EU’s human rights obligations and even EU law.
The EU’s latest assault on human dignity came last week with a new agreement on asylum procedures and migration management by EU member state interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg. It is, as my colleague and expert Jude Sunderland says, “a recipe for more abuse at EU borders.”
The deal creates an expedited “border procedure.” Many if not most people seeking asylum will be channeled into a sub-standard, accelerated process with fewer normal safeguards, such as legal aid. People are also likely to be put in detention during the procedure, with few exemptions for the most vulnerable, or those with children.
The priority is simply to lock people up and deport them as quickly as possible.
To understand why EU leaders are acting now – and acting so irresponsibly – it perhaps helps to recall that European parliamentary elections are coming up next year. EU leaders want to be seen to be doing something on migration and “acting tough” in response to a challenge from the far right, which seems to be growing in popularity in parts of the EU.
But can you combat extremist political opponents by adopting their extremist policies? Doesn’t morally bankrupt mimicry only mainstream those ideas and empower their creators?
In any case, illegal and inhumane “solutions” are still illegal and inhumane, whether done by outright fascists or by their imitators.
And meanwhile, as the most powerful people in Europe play their political games ineptly, the most powerless people keep paying the price of EU policies that prioritize suffering. People are still getting tortured in Libya, families keep being forced into freezing rivers at the border of Croatia, and men, women, and children continue to drown in the Mediterranean Sea.
