Europe to Harden Migration Stance --- Pact with Tunisia is EU's latest move to resolve fights over accepting arrivals.

"Europe is trying again to resolve its most divisive issue: migration.

After years of bad blood and legal fights, the European Union is edging toward a tough new set of migration and asylum policies, including steps to make it easier to turn people away.

The EU on Sunday secured the first piece of its plan by signing an agreement with Tunisia that promises economic aid and other cooperation in return for Tunisian efforts to crack down on boat crossings and to take back Tunisians illegally entering the bloc.

Migration into Europe and across the Americas has risen sharply since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic, prompting renewed efforts to tighten restrictions on inflows. 

The Biden administration recently unveiled new limits on asylum seekers by declaring that migrants who transited through another country on their way to the U.S. without seeking asylum there would now be ineligible to stay in the U.S.

Europe's new approach has been spearheaded by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, whose antimigration stance helped her sweep to victory in parliamentary elections last year.

Questions remain about whether the EU's plans will significantly dent the number of people seeking to cross illegally into Europe -- and whether the proposals will be fully enacted. Migration groups argue that the EU should reopen safe and legal pathways to the bloc, after a tragedy in June when hundreds of asylum seekers are presumed to have died off the Greek coast after the overcrowded fishing vessel transporting them sank.

The plans still face opposition from Poland and Hungary. The new plans will also need backing from the European Parliament, which has traditionally opposed efforts to restrict asylum seekers' rights.

Since the 2015 migration crisis, when over one million asylum seekers, mainly Syrians, fled across the Mediterranean Sea into the bloc, migration has sparked arguments among the 27 EU members. The fights have at times paralyzed decision-making on other policies.

After sealing a deal with Turkey in 2016 that essentially paid Ankara to keep Syrians from entering the bloc, EU member states have repeatedly failed to agree on a comprehensive system to control illegal immigration while complying with international obligations to give shelter to refugees who need protection.

The volatile politics of migration have shown no signs of abating. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte's government recently collapsed over the issue. Antimigration parties are faring well in opinion polls in several EU countries, including Austria, the Netherlands and Spain, and are well-placed to add seats in next year's European Parliament elections.

EU diplomats nonetheless in June pieced together an overwhelming majority agreement on a new approach to the issue, which blended Meloni's antimigration focus with longstanding demands from some Western European capitals for shared EU responsibility for asylum seekers.

The proposal would allow countries to prescreen refugees and process people deemed unlikely to gain entrance through a swift evaluation. It would also give each member state more authority over where a failed asylum seeker could be returned.

In exchange, the EU would seek to relocate at least 30,000 migrants across the bloc annually. 

If a country refused to take in asylum seekers, they could instead make a 20,000-euro payment, equivalent to roughly $22,500, for each person they don't accept.

While the migration deal was being cobbled together, the EU said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen would travel with Meloni and Rutte to Tunisia for talks on a migration pact. The trio returned to seal last weekend's deal. In June, von der Leyen proposed creating a fund of over $15 billion to finance external partnerships like the Tunisia deal.

At the center of the EU negotiations has been Meloni, whose right-wing government made tackling migration a top foreign-policy priority.

More than 76,000 migrants have arrived by sea to Italy this year, equivalent to roughly 77% of registered Mediterranean Sea arrivals to Europe, according to United Nations data.

The number of arrivals to Europe's southern shores is nearly twice as high as it was during the first half of last year -- and is the highest level since the migration crisis years of 2015.

A big reason for the increased flow of sea arrivals is Tunisia's political and economic turmoil.

On Monday, Amnesty International criticized the EU's deal with Tunisia, saying it signaled "EU acceptance of increasingly repressive behavior" by Saied and the Tunisian government. "This makes the European Union complicit in the suffering that will inevitably result," Amnesty said.

Meloni is showing no sign of regrets. On Sunday, she hailed the Tunisia agreement as a model for building new relationships between European and North African countries." [1]

1.  World News: Europe to Harden Migration Stance --- Pact with Tunisia is EU's latest move to resolve fights over accepting arrivals. Norman, Laurence. 
Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 19 July 2023: A.18.