Almost 10 years have passed since José Manuel Barroso uttered the words: “Never again”.
They came as the then president of the European Commission stood before rows of hundreds of coffins, many of them containing the bodies of children and teenagers, lined up in the airport hangar in Lampedusa, the southern Italian island off whose shore they had died in a shipwreck a few days earlier on 3 October 2013.
Eight days later, 268 people, including 100 children, perished in the stretch of sea between Lampedusa and Malta.
“We remember Barroso’s famous words well,” said Vito Fiorino, a businessman who rescued 47 people in the 3 October tragedy. “He said ‘this should never happen again’ on a European coastline. But nothing has changed in 10 years – the tragedies kept happening, the people kept coming.”
A familiar feeling of disillusion swept over people living in Lampedusa, an island with a population of about 6,000, again last week when they heard the words of Ursula von der Leyen, the current European Commission president, during her fleeting visit with Italy’s far-right premier Giorgia Meloni.
Lampedusa – for years the first port of call for people making the perilous journey by sea from north Africa – was thrust back into the spotlight after more than 11,000 people seeking refuge in Europe arrived on the island within the space of six days.
The spike sent EU member states into disarray, with some tightening controls at their borders with Italy and others refusing to help.
In a declaration reminiscent of something Meloni might say, Von der Leyen spoke about cracking down on people smugglers and swiftly implementing a controversial £105m deal made with Tunisia to stem the flow of irregular migration. Referring to a “10-point plan”, she pledged to quickly deport those whose asylum requests are rejected, and didn’t flinch at Meloni’s plan to create more pre-deportation detention centres – known for their deplorable conditions – and to keep people in them for as long as 18 months.
“We will decide who comes to Europe and under what circumstances, not the smugglers,” said Von der Leyen.
Fiorino found the words chilling. “What right do we have to choose who can stay and who has to leave? I’m sorry if what I am about to say is controversial: but can we only accept people with blond hair and blue eyes, and not those who for years have been fleeing horrendous situations in Africa?”
With more than 130,000 people landing on Italian shores so far this year, Meloni, a key protagonist of the Tunisia deal who vowed not to allow Italy to become “Europe’s refugee camp”, called on member states to work together to find “serious, concrete” solutions.
But if the passage of time has not changed the situation in Lampedusa, neither has it produced workable policies.
“I think it is high time to realise that the last 20 years of immigration policies, in Brussels and in the member states, have not met the expectation of any kind of government whatsoever,” said Andrea Menapace, who leads the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights and Open Migration. “Previous administrations promised agreements with north African countries would diminish immigration – it didn’t happen. We were promised a crackdown on people smugglers – it didn’t happen.”
Meloni and Von der Leyen have been accused of exploiting Lampedusa for political campaigning before the European parliamentary elections next year. “I find that reprehensible,” Dutch MEP Sophie in ’t Veld said last week. Juan Fernando López Aguilar, chair of the European parliament’s civil liberties committee, said Von der Leyen appeared to have been “Melonised”, adding that while it was correct for senior commission figures to travel to the island, he was “puzzled and shocked” by the statements made during the trip.
“To me this is a playbook for the European elections,” added Menapace. “Von der Leyen is looking to expand her candidacy … while the higher arrival numbers are advantageous for Meloni, who plays the role of victim well.”
Von der Leyen’s 10-point plan included providing Italy with support in processing new arrivals while “exploring options to expand existing naval missions in the Mediterranean”.
The final point referred to widening the channels for legal entry into the EU.
“I appreciated very much that she pulled this one out of the bag,” said Christopher Hein, a professor of immigration law and policy at Luiss University in Rome. “Only again, there were no numbers or concrete indications from where, to where, in which timeframe, on what legal basis, nothing like this … we’ve heard this for years now, but nothing has happened – the same with the other points.”
With no money having so far changed hands, the Tunisia deal is yet to produce any fruit – instead, departures have increased by 70% since it was signed in July. Other than concerns over human rights, questions have also been raised about the deal’s legality. “This was an ‘initiative solitaire’ from the commission without a mandate from the council,” said Hein.
Italy and the EU have a similar deal with Libya, where people have reported severe human rights abuses in detention camps, including being beaten, tortured and raped. Others have reported murder in the camps and, as one young man from Sudan said in Lampedusa, people are dying of disease and hunger.
As the EU grapples with immigration, the devastating floods in Libya and earthquake in Morocco are expected to prompt a fresh wave of people attempting to reach Europe. More than 2,000 are estimated to have died during the journey so far this year.
While there is no “magic wand” solution, Hein warned that the EU needs to be careful in striking deals with north African countries. “I have worked in north African countries and know the mood very well,” he said. “They have experienced European colonialism and are very sensitive to all that smells of colonial interventions: ‘We pay you money and you have to do this and that.’ I get the impression that sometimes among politicians, whether national or European, there is not much sensibility towards this and they need to be very careful not to give the impression that the rich EU is paying the ‘poor brothers over there’ to do its dirty work.”
