Not welcome in France: Migrants and Italian activists protest outside the railway station of Ventimiglia, Italy on April 17 after France’s decision to block trains from Italy carrying migrants.

The EU member states quarrel over North African migrants – By Daniela Weingärtner

The small border town of Ventimiglia on the Italian Riviera experienced dramatic scenes in mid-April. Refugees from Tunisia, holding temporary Schengen visas issued by the Italian authorities, demanded permission to travel onward into France. But French border guards turned them away at the crossing between the two EU member states, where checks of identity documents are no longer supposed to exist.

Italy had granted temporary residence permits to thousands of North African refugees in an attempt to reduce the financial burden of having to cope with the migrants landing on its coasts.

Anyone with a temporary visa may move freely throughout the Schengen area. All they need are valid travel documents and adequate means to support themselves. Those who do not have lodgings in France need €62 per day. Those who, like most Tunisians arriving in Ventimiglia, can prove they have relatives already living in France, can make do with €32.

The French tightened their border controls and tried to send as many refugees as possible back to Italy. The EU Commission says this is permissible under Schengen rules. If a country thinks its public safety is in danger, it has the right to temporarily reintroduce border controls, a Commission spokesman confirmed in Brussels.

In the meantime, the Italian government has come to an agreement with the new transitional government in Tunisia allowing newly landed Tunisian refugees in Italy to be immediately repatriated back to Tunisia. But the nearly 20,000 Tunisians who had earlier been brought to the mainland from the island of Lampedusa are waiting to continue on to France.

While member states on the external borders of the EU have been trying to strengthen “Fortress Europe” with the help of Frontex, the EU agency for external border security, other member states are considering changing the rules of the game in the borderless Schengen area. France and Germany, for example, are thinking about the legal option of temporarily moving the Schengen border inwards during times of crisis. In the current situation, that would mean temporarily excluding Italy from the Schengen area.

“We cannot accept a lot of economic refugees coming into Europe via Italy, so we expect Italy to respect the legal provisions,” German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich said at a meeting with his EU counterparts in mid-April. “As yet, we have no knowledge that the number of refugees seeking to enter Germany has increased, but we will strengthen our controls to meet the situation.”

Some see a worrying collapse in solidarity between members of the “Europe without borders.” Yet Cecilia Malmström, European Commissioner for Home Affairs was more optimistic in a debate on the refugee crisis: “This is not a test of the Schengen agreement. The border-free area is a wonderful invention of the EU that we want to preserve. This is a test of European solidarity!”

But it looks as though the Europeans will fail this test. The EU Commission thinks Italy will have no difficulties dealing with 20,000 refugees on its own and does not think it necessary to implement the mechanism that allows migrants to be distributed among Schengen countries during a crisis. But Malmström also knows that the flight across the Mediterranean may take on quite different dimensions if the situation in Libya continues to escalate.

At the moment, member states are revealing themselves to be small-minded and fractious when it comes to the question of how to deal with refugees already in the EU. They are much more generous about providing aid outside the bloc’s borders. The EU Commission department for humanitarian assistance has made €30 million of immediate aid available to Egypt and Tunisia to help them deal with refugees arriving from Libya. The UK has given €2.2 million to help evacuate foreign workers from the beleaguered Libyan city of Misrata, with some of the money supporting the work of the International Organization for Migration in Libya.

The London think-tank CER estimates the EU spends 0.5 percent of its budget annually on migration. In part, this goes toward integrating immigrants and housing refugees, but most of it is used for border controls and deportations. Since a 1999 summit meeting in Tampere, Finland, the EU has undertaken to pursue a balanced immigration policy, intended both to send illegal immigrants back and to support legal immigration. But Fortress Europe has continued to expand.

In July 2010, the EU Commission proposed a law that would allow for temporary permits for seasonal workers, including for harvesting. The law recalled the Hague Program that was passed unanimously in 2004. It tasked the EU Commission with creating a framework for legal immigration, “including admission procedures capable of responding promptly to fluctuating demands for migrant labor in the labor market.”

For more than a year, this law has been passed from one working group of the European Council to another. In a Europe in which right-wing populist parties are gaining influence everywhere, no politician wants to talk about legal immigration. In an attempt to finally move the debate forward, the EU Parliament, as co-sponsor of the law, arranged for a major hearing on the topic shortly before Easter.

Claude Moraes, a Labour Party MEP representing London who came to the UK as a child immigrant, cited an OECD study showing that given demographic developments, the EU could not get by without labor migration and without seasonal workers. Work visas should be valid for at least six months, the report says. It also recommends that member states like Spain, where the tourist season typically lasts longer, should also be permitted to issue visas valid for nine months. Every applicant would have to have valid papers and show a work contract or job offer. They would have a right to humane housing and health insurance and enjoy the same legal protection as native workers.

Sverker Rudeberg, a specialist on immigration at the European Employers’ Federation, told EU lawmakers that companies badly need seasonal workers but currently find it practically impossible to obtain them legally. “It is possible to find illegal workers, and the member states tolerate it. So companies that break the law have a competitive advantage.” His federation wants to achieve the exact opposite by giving an advantage instead to employers acting within the law.

The main objection to the new law, one raised by many conservative representatives, is an obvious one. Who will guarantee that seasonal workers will leave the EU again when their work permits run out? The concern is that young men from North Africa or the former Soviet Union enter on temporary visas only to disappear and remain in the country illegally.

A law against illegal employment that was introduced by the EU Commission in 2009 may help to ease those fears. It calls for hefty fines on employers who hire illegal economic refugees. Such a law could lead to a situation where companies that follow the rules and regulations would in the future be at an advantage. The problem is that there is hardly any legal immigration from third countries. Regulations and rules for seasonal workers continue to be blocked by member states.

The law, set to come into force in all EU states by July 20, has met with little resonance in member states. Only Spain has implemented it fully, while Latvia and Lithuania have introduced it in part. It is hard to avoid the impression that calls for legal employment possibilities and a common European immigration policy are mere lip service. For many companies, it is simply convenient to employ illegal refugees, who enjoy no minimum social standards, and have no legal recourse if they are badly treated and exploited.