Jonathan Thomas is a migration researcher and senior fellow at the Social Market Foundation.
Now that the UK general election campaign is well underway, and Labour remains far ahead in the polls. The Rwanda plan’s days seem numbered in Britain. But it may find a new lease of life in Europe.
The European parliamentary elections may not have represented a clear victory for the ‘far right’, but the European Parliament will now be the most right-leaning ever. As well as the rightward shift in Europe, there is also the beginnings of a left-wing populism – economically left-wing but tough on immigration control – and these parties may now have enough representatives to form their own European Parliament grouping.
As more right-wing parties have gained power within the EU, they have tended to become more accommodated to the EU, intent on reshaping it from the inside. None more so than Italy, under Giorgia Meloni. Yes, Italy has taken action on migration control – most particularly a deal with Albania to process some irregular arrivals apprehended in the Mediterranean.
But Meloni seems to see Italy’s best protection in a tougher EU-wide approach. Her government’s focus delivered the breakthrough at the EU Council in reaching agreement on the EU’s tougher new Pact on Migration and Asylum, after years of negotiation.
The EU requires a strong external border, or EU countries get cold feet about allowing movement without checks across the EU’s internal borders. Many countries have re-imposed checks now that irregular flows into Europe have risen significantly again.
The EU’s asylum policy embeds the requirements of international law, but EU nations frequently balk at its practical consequences. And international law has no answer to the EU’s key challenge of how the burdens and responsibilities of irregular migration should be shared between states. The EU’s constantly reformed ‘Dublin’ system has never worked at any scale and, compounded by the arrival in the EU of over 4 million Ukrainians able to choose where to live, parts of Europe have felt at their limit for accommodating new arrivals.
All of which has seen the current EU Commission sponsor the EU’s tougher new Pact on Migration and Asylum. This accepts that not all EU states are going to agree to take their share of arrivals, so can pay money instead. But the Pact also takes a more forceful approach to irregular arrivals at the EU’s external border, with rapid screening and processing intended to quickly remove those with unfounded claims as if – legally – they had never arrived.
This may have echoes of the UK’s Illegal Migration Act, but, under the EU Pact, any moves towards a Rwanda plan option are still forsworn, because asylum seekers can only be returned to third countries that they have some connection with.
The EU Pact also does not alter two key realities. That those with valid asylum claims must be admitted. And the practical difficulties of returning those whose asylum claims fail. This explains why leading right-wing national politicians across the EU – from Italy to Austria to Hungary – have been so keen to express their admiration for the UK’s Rwanda plan. Giorgia Meloni went as far as to write a joint opinion piece with Rishi Sunak calling Italy and the UK “the closest friends in Europe today”, and for urgent joint action against what was framed as the moral and humanitarian crisis of undocumented migration.
Indeed, no sooner had the EU Pact been agreed upon than half of the EU’s states took the unprecedented step of separately submitting a joint statement to the European Commission arguing that unsustainable levels of irregular arrivals instead requires “out of the box” thinking, calling on the EU to explore externalised solutions, aimed at “rescuing migrants on the high seas and bringing them to a predetermined place of safety in a partner country outside the EU”. Unless the EU Pact significantly improves control of irregular migration at the EU’s external borders, the next step may well therefore see the EU intent on developing its own ‘third country’ response.
So while, in the immediate term, the fate of the Rwanda plan will be decided by the UK general election, in the longer term it may be elections in Europe that are the most determinative of the fate of an idea of migration control that seeks to use the threat of relocation to an unconnected, ‘safe’ third country to dissuade and manage irregular arrivals.
And, whether it is part of the EU or not, the UK, in its efforts to control irregular migration, benefits greatly from its geographical position behind the shield of the EU. Of course, for the EU, the practical hurdles to making a ‘third country’ approach work would remain – to find a third country both safe, and willing, enough to take on this role at reasonable cost.
But, if the EU ultimately did pull this off in a way that impacted the numbers irregularly entering Europe, it is unlikely that a UK government – of whatever persuasion – located in its remote corner of Europe, would be disappointed.