Distribution of Refugees in Europe Previous the 2015 & EU Policies

The Mediterranean has been the primary migrant producing and sending region to European countries. The sea border with the Arab countries led people to cross to Italy or Spain. According to Fargues, the Arabian youth have been more eager to live in the EU countries comparing the elders. On the other hand, generally North African people tend to migrate to Arab oil countries because of dangerous travel to Europe, for this reason they prefer the neighboring countries or the Gulf countries (Fargues & Fandrich, 2012:2).

The irregular migrants from Albania were the highest number among the other nationalities until 2011. Previous 2011, the distribution of the nationalities was as Albanians, Afghanis, Somalians, Palestinians, Iraqis. However, the events in Tunisia led

thousands of people to flee to different countries After the second half of 2011, the irregular migrants from Tunisia began to rise. In 2011 Afghan people were the second irregular group who entered the EU and Pakistanis were in the third place (FRONTEX, 2011a). Even though the demonstrations turned into a civil war in Libya, which has sea border with the EU, the people immigrated to the EU stayed limited comparing to Syria.

Libya is a transit country for the Tunisian, Somalian, Eritrean and Sub-Saharan migrants because of the proximity with the Lampedusa Island of Italy. These countries are politically instable and have high unemployment rates hence, the migration numbers are high, and the border controls are not effective enough at the Central Mediterranean route.

In 2009 and 2010, the number of the irregular migrants decreased to 104.000 from 160.000 in 2008 for all nationalities, and there are some reasons for this decline. The first was the improving economic situations in countries of origin; and the second reason was the strict controls at the external borders of the EU. In 2009, the Albanians had the highest rates of the irregular crossings to EU, and the total detected crossings were about 104.000 and 40.000 of the total migrants were from Albania. After Albanians, the second highest number belonged to Afghan people. In 2009 14.500 irregular migrants crossed Greece – Turkey land and sea border. Lastly, Somalian people took the third place of the detected irregular crossings according to the FRONTEX. (FRONTEX, 2010).

Upon the high crossings from Libya to Italy, Italian authorities did not wait for the new government after toppling of Gaddafi Regime and signed a Cooperation Accord to cooperate on illegal crossings from Libya to Italy in June 2011. In 2012, a Memorandum of Understanding on Security was signed between Libya and Italy to fight against illegal crossings over the Central Mediterranean Route (Perrin, Migration Policy Center, 2012). Moreover, the Visa Information System, which had been introduced in 2010 to provide the exchange information on visa among member countries, was enlarged to Egypt, Tunisia, Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, and Morocco.

That would provide the circulation of information data on visa applications which are refused, expired, or annulled (European Commission, 2012).

As the second greatest immigrants to the EU, Afghani people should be considered besides Syrians. Since, the irregular crossings of Afghani people have never stopped since 2009, but upon the rise of irregular crossings from Turkey to Greece over the sea and land border from 15.000 to about 25.000, Greece stated to build a wall along the Turkey – Greece border to prevent irregular crossings to the EU (The Guardian, Plans for a wall on Greece‘s border with Turkey, 11 Jan 2011). Especially since 2009, numbers of Afghan people to the EU have increased by year, high crossings from Turkey to the EU led Greece to increase the control at the border. In this framework, additional police forces have been tasked by Greek authorities and asked for the assistance of the Community to handle migration issue at the external border of the EU as well (FRONTEX, 2013). By this increased controls the irregular crossings dropped as 90% in 2013.

In return of the strengthened control mechanisms along the EU borders, percentage of the Albanians, Tunisians, Afghans in the total decreased until 2012. However, although Syrian Crisis broke out and the first asylum-seekers entered to Turkey in 2011, the rapid increase of the Syrians began to be struck in 2012. As seen in the Figure 1, Syrian irregular crossings were having the highest rate comparing the other nationalities.

Figure 1: The increase of the Irregular Crossing in 2011 and 2012 by Nationality

Source: FRONTEX, 2013

(https://frontex.europa.eu/assets/Publications/Risk_Analysis/Annual_Risk_Analysis_2013.pdf)

In 2013 the rising trend continued for the Syrian people who have risked their lives by crossing the Mediterranean to reach to the EU. However, according to the data of the FRONTEX about the nationalities of irregular migrants, besides Syrians, Egyptian and Libyan people began to move to the EU with rising numbers. Among the nationalities, the Eritrean people was ranked to the third place after Syrians and Afghans in 2013.

Eritrea has never experienced the Arab Spring process like Tunisia, Egypt or Syria, but people have been fleeing over Libya to the EU to seek asylum.

In Eritrea the regime is totalitarian and the border conflict with Ethiopia couldn‘t be overcome and people feel unsafe in the threat of the war. For this reason, monthly almost 5.000 Eritreans leave their country. Indistinctness of the state which doesn‘t have a constitution, low life standards with low wages, the unemployment and a possible bloody war between Eritrea and Ethiopia have led people to flee and because of the pulling factors and geographical proximity Europe become the destination country for Eritreans as well (Kingsley, The Guardian, 22 Jul 2015).

In 2014, the rank of top three nationalities who entered the EU irregularly were Syrians, Afghans, and Iraqis. The Iraqi crossings were relatively high in 2009 and 2010 but with the surveillance at the Turkish border by Greece in 2011 and the numbers dropped in 2013 and 2014. However, the existence of the Daesh (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant) as the terrorist group in Iraq led increase of the violence in the region. After the horrible activities of Daesh, many Yezidis and Turkmens fled to Turkey, moreover the operations towards the terrorist group rose the danger for the civilian people as well (FRONTEX, 2016). Turkey which is the main asylum- seeker hosting country among the neighboring countries welcomed Iraqi people besides Syrians, however such a huge asylum – seeker stock caused that the asylum seekers began cumulating at the borders or taking risk of reaching to Italian and Greek shores via the boats over the Mediterranean as of 2014. Moreover, the arrivals increased in the beginning of the 2015 and in the summer, Europe faced with the greatest migration crisis since the Second World War.

As of 2011, not only the Eastern Mediterranean route used by immigrants, the Central Mediterranean started to be crossed intensely by the migrants from Libya which is a transit country for Tunisians, Somalian, Eritrean migrants. Hence, the EU sought to

strengthen the controls over the Central Mediterranean route. In this context, as a main destination country Italy signed a Cooperation Accord with Tunisia. Moreover, The EU offered 140 million Euros to the authorities of Tunisia in return of the cooperation on preventing the inflow from Tunisia to the EU (The Reuters, 15 Feb 2011). Thus, after the break of the Arab Spring, the EU has strengthened the border controls and tried to conclude ongoing readmission agreements with the fear of the possible massive pressure to the external borders because of the conflicts in the MENA region. In this framework, FRONTEX began to the operation of Hermes in the Mediterranean to have control against any irregular crossings from Libya (FRONTEX, 2011a).

However, the statistics of the immigrants from the MENA to the EU between 2009 – 2012 show that there was no break in the inflows from the Arab countries to the EU after the Arab Spring. While the illegal crossings to the EU from the border crossing points were about 104.06 in 2009, after the break of the Arab Spring in 2011 they rose to 142.05 and decreased to 72.44 in following year (FRONTEX, 2018b). In fact, the revolutions did not cause a new massive increase in the number of the immigrants in 2011. Especially although Libya experienced the civil war, a significant inflow to the EU did not happen. In 2011, more than one million people fled Libya and the migratory movements can be grouped into three. Firstly 422.000 of people sought asylum in the neighboring countries in Sub- Saharan region rather than crossing the Mediterranean without the risk of death. The second group was the people, who came to Libya from different regions to work, numbered as more than 700 thousand. After the break of the civil war in Libya, these people from different nationalities began to flee to their own countries or neighbors of Libya. The third group is ‗the de facto refugees of Libya‘, who needed international protection, were originally from Somalia, Eritrea, Sudan and so on.

Although they lacked the protection of their own country, these people were not the refugees, since Libya has not signed the 1951 Geneva Convention yet (Fargues &

Fandrich, 2012: 3). People find crossing the Mediterranean more dangerous than migration to the neighboring countries which maintained the open-door policy for more than 650.000 Libyans who were admitted by Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Sudan, Niger and Chad.

The main approach of the EU for the management of the migration is to ensure financial aid as an instrument of the implementation of the policies towards the neighboring countries. The main concern has become the massive inflows to the external borders so, the EU has improved the policies toward hindering the incomings from the Arab- Mediterranean countries. Since, while conducting free movement within the EU, the Union also tried to keep irregular migration at the minimum level (ORSAM, 2012:11).

By doing so, the evaluation of the migration policies show parallelism with the integration process of the EU. The more the Community becomes homogenous in its own, the less it has become tolerant against unwished migrants. However, the European values and norms make difficult to take strict measures for the external border control.

For this reason, the EU has worked on the GAMM as a more comprehensive and coherent migration policy for last decade.

The European Commission laid a foundation of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS) in 1997 Amsterdam Treaty which targeted to adopt common procedures on protection of the asylum-seekers The CEAS prescribes the shared responsibility of the member states, the equal – treatments to the asylum – seekers and refugees and preventing the forfeiture of their rights (Hampshire, 2015:538). In this framework the GAMM (Global Approach to Migration and Mobility), which had been introduced in 2005 by the Commission, developed in 2007 and 2009. However, the break of the Arab Spring in 2011, it became necessary to evaluate GAMM which have been considered as the main framework of the CEAS. Renewed GAMM would be more effective and ensure coherent policies between the member states. Moreover, the EU has been trying to be ready for the possible massive people mobility from the countries that experienced the Arab Spring. Especially the Commission emphasized in the Communication on the Functioning of the Schengen Area that ―situation in Syria may prompt a future migration flow into the neighboring countries, and also into the European Union‖

(European Commission, 2012). According to the statistics, there was no significant inflow to the EU until 2015. In this connection, the precautions against possible massive inflows from the Mediterranean contains four pillars in the context of the GAMM as 1. Management of the legal migration and mobility,

2. Fight against to irregular migration and human trafficking,

3. Constructing an asylum policy based on the international protection and enhancing the external dimension of the migration,

4. Increasing the advantages of the migration and people mobility.

It is stated that the GAMM is expected to be based on the migrants, since the rights of the migrants have been blurred point of the asylum policies. (European Commission, 2011d).

Not only as in the GAMM, but also the cooperation with the countries of origin became necessary for the EU. Thus, the EU launched the Dialogues for Mobility with Tunisia and Morocco in 2012 (European Commission, 2011c). According to Fargues and Fandrich, these attempts like the partnerships or the readmission agreements with the third countries is just passing the buck to the neighboring countries instead of the managing current situation (Fargues & Fandrich, 2012:8). In the Communication of the European Commission on migration in 2011 the short-term solutions taken by the EU are stated as providing €100 million fund for the humanitarian needs of these people and their returns to origin countries; an operation by FRONTEX in the Central Mediterranean; the additional EUROPOL forces charged in Greek border (European Commission, 2011b). The attitude of the EU shows that precautions taken by the EU did not address to the problem on the humanitarian aspect. Since, the first response of the EU vis-à-vis the inflows has been based on the prevention the arrivals of the migrants to Italy and Greece, sending people, who arrived in the EU because of the economic reasons, back to origin countries, implementing security-oriented policies towards migrants and ongoing events in the MENA and solving the problem in their region via the financial aids.

The cooperation with the source and transit countries has been necessary, and financial aids have been tendered as the advantage of the cooperation with the EU on migration management. In fact, the financial support has been given to the MENA countries since the 1970s. Since the MENA countries seemed the first step of the security in Europe. To make Europe the area of security, freedom and justice, the stability and security was a requirement in the ‗near abroad‘. In this context, the harmonization with the EU has been pre-conditions for the facilities. (Yacoubian, 2004). After Arab Spring, the EU has

pursued the ‗more and more policy‘ as in the democracy promotion in Arab Mediterranean countries, more than humanitarian aspect, the national security concerns came into prominence in the EU asylum policies as well.

Europe has pursued different policies towards the Mediterranean countries via the policies like the Global Mediterranean Policy (1972 – 1992), Renewed Mediterranean Policy (1992 – 1995), Euro – Mediterranean Partnership and European Neighborhood Policy (2004-2012). The Community asked for more cooperation and harmonization between Europe and the Mediterranean countries, however the asylum and migration management were not part of the policies. Only the Neighborhood Policy (ENP) referred migration issue which was launched after the construction of the framework of the CEAS in the Amsterdam Treaty (Samur, 2009). More than asylum and the migration, the democracy promotion and spreading of European values and norms become the main purpose of the policies. The ENP contains the beginning of the Arab Spring. For this reason, the EU tried to evaluate the ‗Arab Spring‘ as a process of democracy promotion. The logic behind the precautions against to possible migration crisis has been to stop the asylum-seekers in return of the financial facility as stated in the Communication on ―Partnership for Democracy and Shared Prosperity‖ (European Commission, 2011b).

Besides financial facilities, the readmission agreements are the main instruments of the Community for the implementation of the EU advantageous policies. The funds and possible membership have been presented as the condition of the more cooperation and harmonization with the EU institutions, however after the massive migrant inflows from these countries led the EU engage the funds and membership processes to the readmission agreements and more controlled migration policies (Fargues & Fandrich, 2012:13). Until the 2015 crisis, the EU tried to conclude the readmission agreements with countries of origin and transit.