# taz.de -- European migration policy in Africa: Moving Europe’s borders to Africa
> Europe wants to “fight the root causes of migration“ by providing more
> aid to Africa. A cynical game: they are effectively paying for people to
> be detained.
(IMG) Bild: A refugee rescued in the Mediteranean: the individual fate is of no interest to the EU
Between 2010 and 2015, over 700,000 African asylum seekers entered EU
countries. Every year the numbers are increasing rapidly. Over the same
period, this figure has risen by 260 percent. In its most recent report on
migration flows to Europe, the International Organization for Migration
wrote that in 2016 “ the number of migrants from Syria, Iraq and
Afghanistan is decreased and the number of migrants from Africa […]
increased“.
The population of Africa is set to more than double by 2050. Germany’s
Development Minister, Christian democrat Gerd Müller, recently stated that
migration from Africa could “increase dramatically“.
At this week's EU summit, migration from the African continent was top of
the agenda. The EU wants to avoid another refugee crisis, such as the one
witnessed in 2015, at all costs, not least for the sake of the union’s
future and to counter pressure from right-wing populists. A repeat of 2015
“cannot, should not and must not“ be allowed to happen, Merkel stated
recently at the conference of her Christian Democratic Union party.
When it comes to setting a new EU-Africa agenda, Germany is leading the
charge. This past October, Merkel returned to Africa for the first time
since 2011. Her trip was then followed by a stream of African heads of
states and delegations visiting Berlin. A similar scene played out in
Brussels. Not even the Ebola crisis generated this much interest in the
African continent. On 1 December, Germany assumed presidency of the G20
group, declaring that one of the pillars of the federal government’s
programme would be: ‚Accepting responsibility – especially for Africa’.
The EU launched its new approach to EU-Africa relations at the height of
the Syrian refugee crisis. On 11 and 12 November 2015, the EU invited the
African Union (AU) to attend a migration summit in Valletta on the
Mediterranean island of Malta. There member states set up a €1.8-billion
‘EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa’. The Valletta Action Plan states that
the aim of this fund is to address “the root causes of destabilisation,
forced displacement and irregular migration“ by boosting economic growth
and development in Africa.
## Misleading funds
In Valletta, Africa’s governments pledged to undertake joint efforts “to
fight against irregular migration“. However, they rightly saw the
billion-euro trust fund as misleading: the lion’s share had long been
earmarked for development spending within the EU budget. And African
leaders weren’t too eager to comply with all of the EU’s wishes.
Remittances sent back to Africa by migrants in Europe are too crucial and
deportations unpopular among the electorate at home.
As such, very little happened initially. But six months later, the EU began
to tighten the screws on their African 'partners’. “All policies and
instruments at the EU’s disposal,“ the EU Commission stated in a paper
published on 7 June 2016, should be used “to achieve concrete results“ in
“managing migration“.
On the same day, social democrat EU Commission First Vice-President Frans
Timmermans, a Dutch politician, told the EU Parliament that the new Africa
policy would be a “mix of positive and negative incentives“. Third
countries that “effectively“ worked together with the EU would be
“rewarded“; there would be “consequences“ for those that didn’t, i.e. the
carrot and stick approach. For those who participated, the EU promised a
total sum of €8 billion by the end of the decade. Their goal: “to bring
order to migration flows“.
## Negative incentives
The EU's approach is twofold: firstly, decrease the number of migrants
arriving on the continent, and, secondly, subject those who do make it to
faster deportation. When the new policy was formally adopted on 28 June,
the European Council demanded “specific and measurable results in terms of
fast […] returns of irregular migrants“, a request it reiterated on 21
October. If African partners did not deliver “concrete results […] in
managing migration better“, they would be ready to adapt “engagement and
financial aid“.
Those who don’t produce the desired outcomes are set to lose not only aid
payments but access to markets. The policy is referred to as creating and
applying “the necessary leverage, by using all relevant EU policies,
instruments and tools, including development and trade“.
One such instrument is the mobilisation of private investment. The EU plans
to set aside €3 billion from its development budget, a sum member states
are expected to match. This fund should enable European businesses to
invest an additional (and rather spectacular) €62 billion in Africa by 2020
– at least in the countries that agree to help boost border security. Back
in June, Timmermans called it an “ambitious External Investment Plan [for
third countries] to help create opportunities and tackle the root causes of
migration“. This investment should help create jobs and keep people in
Africa.
„These are development funds that are now being re-diverted to promote
business,“ criticises Inge Brees from NGO CARE in Brussels. She says that
the EU does not check whether these projects actually aid development or
whether employees and human rights are respected. Most importantly,
however, this aid is concentrated in countries that are key for migration
control – and absent in nations that aren’t. “This money didn’t just appear
out of nowhere,“ says Brees. “Otherwise they would have made funds
available to tackle other crises.“
## EU-Turkey deal: the new model
The same is true of the Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF), which has since grown
to €2.5 billion. This pot is also mainly composed of EU development budget
funds yet to be earmarked for spending. Now the Council plans to top it up.
Money in exchange for stopping refugees: this is the new policy approach
embodied by a billion-euro deal between the EU and Turkey. Brussels not
only seems happy to turn a blind eye to the fact that the majority of
Africans that migrate to Europe are fleeing regimes at home – it even goes
one step further: the EU not only offers support to democratic governments
but to dictatorships as well, all with the aim of stopping the streams of
refugees.
Taz calculates that between 2000 and 2015 the EU and its member states paid
at least €1.913 billion to African countries to stop refugees. This doesn’t
include Berlusconi and Gaddafi’s 2008 refugee deal whereby Italy promised
Libya €5 billion (even though only €250 million of this actually swapped
hands).
The actual sum is, in all likelihood, much higher: relevant agreements
almost never explicitly state that their aim is to prevent refugees. Most
of the time, a familiar pattern can be observed. Take the example of Spain
and Mali: in January 2007 Spain’s King Juan Carlos invited the president of
Mali Amadou Toumani Touré to lunch. Until that point, Spain had more or
less paid little attention to the Sahel state. But as more and more West
Africans began entering Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s African enclaves, as
well as the Canary Islands, via Mali, Touré agreed to sign two agreements,
which he did at the meeting’s close. The first promised Mali €103 million
in development aid by the end of 2011. In the second, Touré pledged to
“effectively co-operate“ to manage the country’s borders – and promised not
to hamper Spain’s attempts to deport Malians.
## Harmonised blackmail across the EU
That was how Spain’s government bought half of West Africa. And it was a
strategy that worked: in the years that followed, hardly any African
refugees managed to reach the Canary Islands. Other countries tried to
follow their lead. In 2007 the Netherlands cut roughly €10 million of
development aid for Ghana because the country’s government refused to
readmit deportees.
These were just one-off actions. Then, in 2010, the EU founded its External
Action Service (EEAS) creating countless Delegations, even in the isolated
dictatorship of Eritrea, the country that produces the highest number of
African refugees in Europe. The EU’s assured foreign policy chief Federica
Mogherini, who hails from the country most affected by African migration,
Italy, wants the EU to set out foreign policy as if it were a single state.
Migration control is one of her key objectives.
For months, the EU has been engaged in intense negotiations on 'compacts’ –
bespoke deals with individual countries. So far compacts have been arranged
with Lebanon and Jordan along with five “priority states“ in Africa:
Senegal, Mali, Nigeria, Niger and Ethiopia. Exactly what these frameworks
entail is unclear. On 11 December it was reported that Dutch Foreign
Secretary Bert Koenders had signed a readmission agreement for rejected
asylum seekers from Mali with his Malian counterpart Abdoulaye Diop on
behalf of the EU. Mali would thus become the first state on the African
mainland to agree to such a deal with the European Union (previously the
only other African state to sign a similar agreement was Cape Verde).
Mali’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, Abdoulaye Diop, quickly denied the
claim, stating that no readmission agreement had been signed and that any
reports to that effect were “lies“. He claimed the agreement only concerned
nine projects (totalling €145 million) that had been agreed for Mali as
part of a migration dialogue with the EU set to continue the following
September. Back in February, in a strategy paper marked 'confidential’, the
EU’s External Action Service noted that the Malian Government was “against
readmission agreements“.
## Negotiations at a price
Discussions concerning further agreements are currently ongoing with
Nigeria and Tunisia, as well as Ethiopia, Niger and Senegal. Whether
additional countries will be added to the list and under what conditions
remains to be seen. According to an internal paper written by the German
government in the run-up to this week’s EU summit, which taz has been able
to obtain, the EU’s External Action Service is of the opinion that “in any
case, the acquisition of further countries as partners must be accompanied
by the provision of additional funds“. However, it seems Berlin remains
sceptical. The government feels an approach that involves linking
assistance with money in this way is “too general“; instead, it would be
wise not to “put a price on negotiations with third countries“ before they
begin.
What matters first and foremost is what the EU wants to get out of these
African nations. In a strategy paper concerning Ethiopia released in March
2016, the EU demanded that the government in Addis Ababa reduce “secondary
movement from refugee camps in Ethiopia towards Europe“. In a paper
released by the Commission in February 2016, Nigeria, a hub for passport
counterfeiters, was instructed to take more comprehensive action against
smugglers and document forgers as well as to speed up the introduction of
biometric ID cards, which until that point had been sluggish.
When Nigeria’s president Muhammadu Buhari visited Berlin in October 2016,
Chancellor Angela Merkel stressed that “anyone who has not been granted the
right to remain in Germany – this affects 92 percent of arrivals in this
country from Nigeria – will have to return.“
Deportations are always the most pressing issue. As far as Europe is
concerned, they don’t happen often enough. In 2014, 470,000 people were
issued with an order to leave the EU, but, over the same period, a mere
169,000 were deported. More recent figures are not available.
## Bypassing parliament
What is the reason for this substantial gap? The answer: most individuals
don’t hold passports. A lack of documentation is “still the most
significant issue in quantitative terms“ with regard to deportations. That
was the evaluation of the German federal/state working group on expulsion.
In such cases, immigration authorities have to establish the individual’s
nationality and obtain a passport from the relevant embassy, but the
embassies often don’t comply.
Previous bilateral readmission agreements signed with some African
countries have done little to resolve the issue. These new deals are set to
change the situation. In order to avoid the European Parliament, which
tends to be sensitive to human rights issues, slowing processes down, the
EU prefers to pursue informal agreements which do not require parliamentary
approval.
Of the 60 agreements regarding deportation that Germany, the UK, Italy,
France and Spain have signed with African countries, only eight are formal
readmission agreements. The rest comprise opaque arrangements, usually
between national police authorities, such as Italy’s memoranda with
Senegal, the Ivory Coast, Nigeria and Niger that have not even been
disclosed to the nation’s own parliament.
The EU aims to include a strategic weapon in its fight to boost
deportations as part of compact negotiations: the ‘laissez-passer’. These
permits are travel documents that are valid for a single deportation. The
trick? The passport isn’t issued by the suspected country of origin but by
the EU state that wishes to deport the individual in question. The EU first
‚recommended’ the laissez-passer in 1994, but until now hardly any African
nation has agreed to acknowledge them. The Commission now hopes to change
their minds. It is demanding that African states agree to allow the EU to
designate individuals’ nationalities and thus to surrender some of their
national sovereignty.
This carries its own risks for partners that agree to such terms. Refugees
in Europe whose applications have been rejected could easily find
themselves being declared citizens of a country that accepts
laissez-passers, irrespective of where they actually come from. At the end
of October, the European Parliament adopted a regulation which enables the
mandatory introduction of laissez-passers. It will enter into force on 8
April 2017.
## Keep borders open but with more controls
This means the question of who belongs where is now tinged with
controversy. Throughout large parts of Africa, it has until now been
relatively easy for citizens to travel between neighbouring states.
‘African integration’ is a stated aim of all African governments and
regional organisations. Officially, the EU also supports this objective.
But its policies are having the exact opposite effect. Now an ever-tighter
web of control mechanisms is being created that is gradually restricting
freedom of movement on the continent.
The EU Commission states that it has absolutely no intention of closing
Africa’s internal borders; it simply wants them to be better policed,
adding that those who can provide identification will be allowed through.
But this is only half of the story.
There is a key trans-Sahara route that crosses the north east of Mali. West
Africans can move freely across the border to Niger. But Niger’s police
situated at the Yassan border post have recently been turning away an
increasing number of travellers. “This affects citizens of Mali and, to a
much greater extent, individuals from other West African countries,“ says
Éric Alain Kamden, who has been working on the ground for NGO Caritas since
2009. For those from countries such as Ghana, Sierra Leone or the Ivory
Coast, it is assumed that Europe is their ultimate destination. According
to an inspector in Yassan, guards are instructed not to grant these
individuals passage. There are reports of similar practices along other
borders in the region. Thus traditional migration routes in West Africa,
which are crucial to the region, are being restricted.
## Trying not to give the wrong impression
So what might a well-designed migration corridor from West Africa to Europe
look like? In 2008 the former EU development commissioner Louis Michel
tried to implement a plan to create the ideal migration set-up. He opened
an EU job centre in Mali’s capital, Bamako. There Malians in search of work
were able to apply directly for job openings in Europe. If they were
successful, a visa would be granted. The project was a spectacular failure.
The EU itself is not allowed to issue work visas – and member states had no
desire to.
The situation remains unchanged to this day. Even though all the papers
published on the new Africa partnership speak of “creating legal routes“,
the 'compacts’ contain little to no mention of them. The drafts once
included references to “more places for students, researchers and
lecturers“ in “Erasmus+“ scholarship schemes. This is no longer the case.
The European Council wants to avoid anything that may give the impression
that countries want more migration. Anyone wishing to work in Europe must
now almost certainly face the prospect of having to take the perilous
journey across the sea and then pretend to be an asylum seeker upon
arrival.
If they even get that far, that is. The simplest way to keep refugees and
migrants in Africa is to fence them in. According to the Geneva-based
Global Detention Project, there are currently 33 migrant detention
facilities in Libya, 16 in Morocco, five in Senegal, two in Tunisia and one
in Mauritania (the last of which was built by Spain).
## Torture and forced labour
According to a report issued jointly by the UN Human Rights Commission and
the UN Mission in Libya in mid-December, “severe overcrowding, lack of
light and very little ventilation“ are commonplace in many of Libya’s
camps. The report also highlighted the frequent lack of sanitation
facilities, claiming that diarrhoea and respiratory illnesses were
widespread and that there was a lack of water, food and medical care.
“We black-skinned Africans, we are called animals and we are treated as
animals,“ a 16-year-old Eritrean boy, who in the summer of 2016 spent six
weeks in a windowless metal hangar with around 200 others in the Libyan
capital of Tripoli, told UN investigators. Others spoke of torture, forced
labour and sexual violence.
Ransom demands are constantly on the rise, Meron Estefanos, Director of the
Eritrean Initiative on Refugee Rights, an NGO run by the Eritrean exile
community in Sweden, explains. Kidnappers can demand up to $15,000 per
person from the individuals’ families. Payments are made by mobile
transfer.
This practice of detaining migrants was first used during the period of the
Berlusconi/Gaddafi deal. When the Libyan leader was toppled in 2011,
militia took over the prisons. According to a UN report, the responsible
department at the Libyan interior ministry currently runs 24 detention
centres with between 4,000 and 7,000 detainees. The report states that
further camps run by other authorities and militia also exist. According to
the EU’s estimates, an astonishing seven percent of the over one million
migrants and refugees in Libya are being held in camps. This equates to
roughly 77,000 people. At present, the EU is trying to ascertain which
camps can be upgraded to be in line with EU standards.
## The horrors of migrant prison
Egypt, a country that Germany has prioritised as a key EU partner in its
new approach to migration, has a stunning 64 migrant jails in operation. At
the same time, it is also a partner in the 'Better Migration Management’
project organised by German development agency GiZ (German Agency for
International Cooperation). The aim of the project is to advise border
police on “applying practices that respect human rights“. Apparently, GiZ
is unable to put pressure on Egypt to force the country’s military to close
its refugee jails.
However, that didn’t stop GiZ from proudly stating that it had refused a
request for military equipment and the construction of detention cells made
by Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, a man currently under an
international arrest warrant for his involvement in suspected genocide in
Sudan’s western Darfur region. Otherwise, the EU seems to have no qualms
about co-operating with Bashir. It is contemplating cancelling all of the
country’s debt, is willing to lobby the US government to drop Sudan from
its terror list and will ask the WTO to consider a fresh round of talks.
Sudan isn’t the only dictatorship the EU has become involved with for the
purpose of migration control. Ethiopia, a country where hundreds of people
have been killed this past year by forces quashing protests, was promised
110 million euros worth of projects in the first (and recently completed)
round of allocations from the EU Trust Fund for Africa.
Eritrea, one of the world’s worst dictatorships, may not be Germany’s
development partner like Ethiopia, but it is still able to benefit from the
'Better Migration Management’ Programme. According to GiZ, the training of
Eritrean officials may not be allowed in Eritrea, but they are being
trained in neighbouring countries. The head of the EU delegation to
Eritrea, Christian Manahl, told taz that training may at some point be
carried out in Eritrea. The option hadn’t been ruled out.
15 Dec 2016
## AUTOREN
(DIR) Christian Jakob
## TAGS
(DIR) Entwicklungszusammenarbeit
(DIR) migControl
(DIR) EU
(DIR) Schwerpunkt Flucht
(DIR) Lesestück Recherche und Reportage
(DIR) migControl
(DIR) migControl
(DIR) MigrationControl
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(DIR) Kommentar Fluchtgründe in Afrika: Die Hoffnung stirbt zuletzt
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dass die Repression Menschen außer Landes treibt.
(DIR) ECOWAS-Beamter über EU und Migration: „Man kriminalisiert Migration“
Die westafrikanische Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft bleibt bei Verhandlungen
zwischen EU und regionalen Staaten zur Migrationskontrolle außen vor,
beklagt Sanoh N’Fally.