EU summit in Salzburg kicks cans down road

The EU heads of state and government had a summit meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Salzburg. There wasn't much drama. And not much was accomplished.

A Politico EU report on the summit opens with, "That was awkward." (David Herszenhor and Jacopo Barigazzi, Rocky mountain summit 09/21/2018)

Austria's Wunderwuzzi Chancellor Sebastian "Babyface" Kurz (ÖVP) currently holds the six-month rotating Presidency of the EU Council and so had a lot to do with shaping the agenda. His signature issue is his bitter opposition to immigration and apparently he is apparently equally determined not to address the current issue in Europe in a practical and serious way. So the first day of the summit was devoted to the topic of how the EU can shut out foreigners. Kurz as Council President established that topicfor the summit.

The main solution to the challenge of refugees from the Middle East and Africa coming to Europe to ask for asylum is called Turkey. Angela Merkel came up with that extend-and-pretend solution in 2016: the EU pays Turkey, and makes various other concessions, and Turkey holds what is now around three million refugees and prevents them coming to the EU. It's not a stable solution nor is it one that gives particular attention to what the refugees can do in the future. And if (when) the Syrian government launches its expected military assault on Idlib province, it could send up to 800,000 new refugees into Turkey and quickly destabilize the current arrangement even more.

Herszenhor and Barigazzi also report that Austrian hospitality was not nearly so obsessively-complusively organized as one might expect from Austrian stereotyples:

The media center was far too small for the 1,000 journalists in attendance and, thanks to a glass roof and unseasonably warm September weather, it effectively turned the building into a sauna. Adding to the ambience, butter-fingered catering staff repeatedly dropped glasses and coffee mugs, smashing them on the tiled floor — making the event feel like a Greek wedding.

The breakdowns continued until the very end, when the audio feed failed during German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s closing news conference.

Given how Kurz and his coalition partner and Vice Chancellor Heinz-Christian Strache (FPÖ) are combining anti-EU posturing with their anti-immigrant policies, it wouldn't surprise me at all to find out the glitches they report were at least partially intentional.

Thursday was devoted to Brexit.

If anything of substance was accomplished on either issue, it was not very evident.

They all did reiterate their consensus on strenthening Frontex, the EU border control and coast guard agency agency.

Miguel Otero-Iglesias gives this summary of what a real solution might look like - a solution the EU has been unable to deliver, despite the massive freakout about the large wave of refugees arrived in 2015-6 (Europe’s two-faced migration reality Politico EU 09/21/2018):

The most persuasive idea, advocated by the World Bank, is to develop legal channels of migration based on the demand of the job market and better education and retraining systems to cover the displaced local workforce. These programs could be financed by the introduction of progressive fees on working visas. Crucially, these visas would be for time-limited periods, and only those migrants who integrate well would then acquire the nationality of the host country.

But for such a scheme to work, borders would need to be better controlled, repatriation agreements further developed and better implemented, and inspections against hiring of irregular workers would have to be more intrusive and widespread.

It would also have to specifically address the fate of the millions of refugees now retained in limbo in Turkey, Italy, and Greece. And it calls for a reorientation of EU foreign policy to mitigate conflicts in the Middle East and Northern Africa. The NATO intervention in Libya in 2010 was a major contributor to the current situation. I wouldn't venture to say that Libya under Gaddafi had a model immigration policy. But they did provide some economic opportunities for African immigrants and blocked a significant portion of immigrants from going north toward Europe. (Otero-Iglesias's boiler-plate lines about displacement and retraining could use some work, because displacement of current workers is a minor issue at best, although public perceptions may be otherwise thanks to xenophobic propaganda.)

The EU was at least able to come up with a small story on Serbia maybe-sometimes-soon will make an agreement with Frontex to enhance their border controls, but certainly not to accept more of them as immigrants. (Frontex ja - Flüchtlinge nein Wiener Zeitung 21.09.2018)

Kurz has proven himself adept in his first year as Chancellor at making a show of doing something on his pet anti-immigration issue. Coming up with substantive solution hasn't yet shown itself to be a strong point for him. The EU summit continues that pattern.

It's even less surprising that nothing of substance got accomplished on Brexit. The current deadline for Brexit is March 2019. And all sides have an interest in waiting to the last possible moment to close the deal, with the qualification that economic uncertainty will be more pressing as the months roll on. Businesses and banks are making preparations for the split, so the terms of Britain's exit are important.

The main sticking point in the Brexit negotiations now is how to manage the borders between British Northern Ireland and Ireland. (Tom McTague, UK, EU still can’t solve Irish border conundrum Politico EU 09/21/2018)

The peace agreement that finally ended decades of bitter and violent conflict in Northern Island crucially involved free movement between Northern Ireland and Ireland. Once Britain is formally outside the EU, having the current level of free border movement would mean that Britain's border would not be a normal international border between and EU and non-EU countries. Britain in understandably reluctant to establish the regular border security and enforcement at a line inside Britain, at the border to Northern Ireland. In concept, that would be analogous to Texas having an open border with Mexico and the national border controls being enforced only at the Texas borders to other US states. That is not the way inernational borders normally work.

Wolfgang Münchau's Eurointelligence describes that current status of the negotiations in The long Brexit endgame has started 09/20/2018:

What complicates the Brexit process massively is the multitude of triangular games: there are three competing positions in the House of Commons, none of which commands a majority on its own: May’s Chequers’ Plan; a eurosceptic Canada-style Brexit; and Labour’s plan for a customs union. Everybody is playing the same game: as we reported yesterday Labour does not want the spectre of a second referendum to scare eurosceptics in the Tory party into supporting Chequers. The British government is playing the converse game. A treasury minister yesterday upheld the possibility of a second referendum for precisely this reason - to scare the eurosceptics into supporting Chequers.

In another post (EU ponders Irish backstop protocol to help May Eurointelligence 09/17/2018):

The EU‘s technical solution differs in some respects from that of Theresa May, but the technical details are not the critical point at this stage. More important is the legal procedure itself. The EU is offering a protocol to the Irish backstop clause in the withdrawal treaty, which sets out possible technical solutions in case no agreement on a future trading relationship is agreed. As long-standing observers of technically complex EU-level treaty discussions, we are not surprised to witness the grand entry of the protocol, an important legal device in EU diplomacy that often succeeds in overcoming seemingly insolvable problems. Important as it may be, in historical perspective the Irish backstop is not the most difficult obstacle EU diplomats ever had to surmount. [my emphasis]

Monika Graf makes a very appropriate cautionary observative in Krisen machen die EU stark. Derzeit gibt es keine. Salzburger Nachrichten 21.09.2018 (behind subscription). She picks up on the optimistic saying that crises make the EU stronger. That can't be said of the handling of the Greek crisis in 2015, which helped set the stage for the contentious inability of the EU to agree on a Union-wide solution for the refugee inflow of that year that continued into 2016, commonly referred to as the refugee crisis of 2015.

She points out a flip side of that optimistic saying, which is that the EU can only manage to come up with good common solutions on major issues when there is a crisis. And that's not a good thing:

Rational betrachtet müssten die EU-Staaten jenes Zeitfenster nutzen, das sich durch die gut laufende Konjunktur und die Erfolge bei der Eindämmung von Defiziten und Migration geöffnet hat. In allen Staaten der Eurozone wachst die Wirtschaft, sogar um die italienischen Banken ist es wieder ruhig geworden, und an der Südküste Europas sind bis August so wenig Menschen angekommen wie nicht einmal vor 2015.

[Rationally considered, the EU states must use this time window that has been opened by the postive economic cycle and the successes with the limiting of deficits and migration {immigration}. The economy is growing in all state of the eurozone, things have even calmed down with the Italian banks, and since August there were fewer people arriving that even before 2015.]

The Herbert Hooverish conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic continues to be harmful for economic policy. But the point that she's making here is that even taking view of the deficit obsessives, the EU should be making progress on major problems like immigration and presumably on reforming the eurozone before another crisis hits.

And depending on how the military situation in Idlib develops, a new surge in immigration could begin in the fourth quarter of this year.

Immigration and political radicalization

Wofgang Münchau's Eurointellgence Report (09/19/2018) makes this observation, which I would say applies to the US, as well: "Immigration has become to Germany what Europe has been to the UK - a permanent issue that ends up radicalising both sides in the debate, and society in general."

I wouldn't say that it applies to Austria, at least not yet. The far right (FPÖ) have made significant gains with anti-immigration demagoguery. And the conservative party (ÖVP) has also adopted a hardline anti-immigration program at the national level, although some of the party leaders in the federal states aren't yet willing to go full Orbán yet.

But the Social Democratic Party (SPÖ) isn't showing any signs of what I would understand as radicalism yet. Although they have been pretty articulate in criticizing the ÖVP/FPÖ government's showy and highly ideological anti-immigrant policies.

The weirdness of immigration controversies in European politics

The immigration issue continues to be exploited by far-right radical and anti-EU groups in Europe. The situations in Germany and Austria are the ones with which I'm most familiar.

What I continue to find astonishing is how divorced from pracitcal and realistic solutions the public debate often is.

The current solution to the mass immigration problem originating from the Middle East and North Africa was established by Angela Merkel in early 2016 in negotiations with Turkey's authoritarian President Tayyip Erdoğan. The deal in simple terms was that Turkey would hold the refugees coming across the Mediterranean in exchange for the EU paying them to do so.

The EU outsourced its most difficult border control problem to Turkey, which currently holds three million or so refugees in conditions that are very likely not the best. A smaller number are also held in Italy and Greece.

In politics, a "solution" that holds for two and a half years is easy to count as a success. But this was always a delicately balanced arrangement that could fall apart at any moment if, for instance, Erdoğan's government decides it serves them better to start sending massive numbers or refugees north than to keep holding up their end of the deal. Italy's new government, in which the far-right Lega party led by Interior Minister Matteo Salvini controls immigration policy, is already posturing against EU agreements and international law to show how much his party hates foreigners.

It's a standard Angela Merkel extend-and-pretend solution.

And it can be thrown out of kilter by a Syrian military push into the Idlib province. Michael Peel reports (EU steps up planning for refugee exodus if Assad attacks Idlib Financial Times 09/14/2018):

The situation in and around Idlib, which borders Turkey, has added urgency because several million people are estimated to be gathered there.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said this week that 30,000 people had been displaced from their homes by air and ground attacks by the Syrian regime and its allies on the opposition enclave, while a full assault could drive out 800,000.

Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president, this week warned that the “impending humanitarian disaster” in Idlib must be a “deep and direct concern to us all”.

So it's not as though the EU governments and leaders don't know that they are facing a longterm, ongoing immigration crisis. But, as Peel also reports, the immediate goal is to clear current immigration camps in Greece by accelerating settlement of their current occupants to make way for new refugees.

But from his report, it appears that even that preparation is something ongoing for other reasons, "The proposal is primarily aimed at dealing with what 19 non-governmental groups on Thursday branded 'shameful' conditions at the island migrant centres." Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is meeting next week with the EU "migration minister" to discuss ways to free up 3,000 spots in the current camps.

Yes, with the imminent prospect of up to 800,000 refugees coming out of Syria to Turkey in the next few weeks, Greece and the EU are looking to free up 3,000 spots in current camps. The current camps that NGOs are criticizing, with good reason, for already bad conditions.

If this were a problem that appeared suddenly due to, say, an asteroid striking the Middle East, the EU's lack of preparedness might be more understandable. But the asteroid was the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent destablization of Iraq and Syria, along with the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 which left Libya a failed state. That meant that Libya, which had previously absorbed large numbers of African refugees as workers, was no longer able and willing to do so. By virutally all Western news accounts, conditions in the current camps in Libya are genuinely horrific.

Since 2011 - the year of the NATO intervention in Libya - there has been a visible crisis of large numbers of refugees making their way on the very dangerous trip across the Mediterranean toward Europe. That was seven years ago. In 2018, the EU is struggling to free up 3,000 places in Greek refugee camps in face of the impending exodus of up to 800,000 refugees from Idlib.

That's what an extend-and-pretend solution looks like.

There is actually a practical, resonable, and humane way for the EU to handle this problem. Its basic elements are well known and have been discussed for years:

• Establish individual country quotas for the reception of non-doucmented immigration flow. In the case of an Idlib situation, that could mean parceling out hundreds of thousands of refugees in a few months time. In less acute years, like most of 2016, 2017, and 2018 to date, the numbers would be radically lower.
• Set up pro-active training programs and recruitment of immigrants for jobs which are not being filled by already-legal EU residents. In Germany and Austria, home assistance for the elderly is a job of which there is and will continue to be a growing demand. They are currently being filled mostly by immigrants, many of them from eastern EU countries. And for the same reason that agriculture in the US is completely dependent on immigrant labor, including massive numbers of undocumented workers: they can't get native workers to do it at any feasbile wage level.
• Provide expanded development assistance to African countries in particular to provide local opportunities for people there.

Another measure that is much discussed is establishing asylum centers in Libya or other places outside of the EU borders where refugees can apply for asylum in Europe. This is known as the "Australian" solution.

But we don't need to know much about what Australia is doing to see that the latter proposal is only barely more than pure fantasy. And that's probably putting it too generously. No African country has agreed to such a scheme, and none are likely to do so. The proposal as it is being discussed runs into all sorts of problems in international and EU law. The only way the EU could insure that such camps would provide minimally humane and secure conditions in countiries like Libya would be to run the camps themselves. The PR problems of the EU setting up camps in Africa in which refugees could be, uh, concentrated, is actually the least serious problem involved.

The rightwing nationalist parties in EU countries are flatly opposed to a new system of refugee settlement and assimilation ("integration" in the official jargon in Germany and Austria). The weakened center-left parties have also been timid at best in validating this approach.

In Austria and Germany and other EU countries, the native birth rate is below the replacement rate, which means that population is expected to decline in coming decades. In order to have growing economies in the sense we currently understand economic growth, they will need significant numbers of immigrants. Several former Eastern Bloc countries are already suffering serious negative economic impacts because so many younger workers have already immigration to other EU countries.

Expanded developmental aid to African countries like Niger is certainly a worthy goal. Also a difficult one to pull off. And that talking point does nothing to address what will happen if another 800,000 refugees come into Turkey in the next few months. Politicians advocating this typically don't bother to reference the fact that the biggest development aid some African countries are currently getting comes from their citizens working in Europe who send money back to their families. And since those amounts are going to individual famililies, much of it presumably gets spent on consumption which boosts their economies. And is also, I assume, less vulnerable to massive diversion of funds than some traditional aid projects might be. In other words, African workers in Europe are a major foreign aid provider.

Much of the actual political rhetoric around immigration, though, is frivolous. The Austrian government has been taking various measure to make life for asylum-seekers in Austria more difficult, which does have the real effect of hurting real people. The rest is largely posturing. In one sense, Austria is a "free-rider" on border issues, because it doesn't have a Mediterranean coast. The current Chancellor Sebastian "Wunderwuzzi" Kurz likes to talk about boosting the presence of the border patrol Frontex, which the EU is currently doing. But if a situation like 2015 occurs again, which could happen at almost any time, and refugees are sent north to Hungary and Austria, what is Chancellor Wunmderwuzzi actually going to do? Gun them down at the border? And, if not, he's going to need a whole lot more than empty rhetoric about asylum centers in North Africa.

He rose to be Chancellor at age 31 because he skillfully exploited and fed xenophobic fears and, as Foreign Minister in 2015-16, did a lot of posturing against Germany and Angela Merkel which in the context, had no real downside for him politically. But if the current -house-them-all-in-Turkey solution doesn't work, he's like to find that chest-beating is a limited practical use in a new acute phase of the immigrantion crisis.

Meanwhile, Putin's government in Russia currently sees an advantage in weakening the US and a very useful instrument to promote it in the immigration issue. Viktor Orbán's government in Hungary is currently the main European model for the anti-EU parties from Austria to Czechia, Solovakia, Poland, Sweden, Germany, Italy, and France. Some of those parties like the FPÖ in Austria have formal friendship/cooperation agreements with Putin's United Russia party, an arrangement that seems to be a rightwing reflection of the arrangements the Soviet Communist Party had with affiliated Communist parties in Europe. Not surprisingly, the Putin-allied parties are agitating over immigration issue, which they polemically call a "migration" crisis, in ways that align with Putin's foreign policy goals.

Sweden's election Sunday, the far right, and the struggling center

Sweden had a national election Sunday. The press coverage in Europe and America was focused largely on how well the far-right, xenophobic Sweden Democrats would do.

This Spiegel Online count (Wahl in Schweden 2018: Ergebnisse im Überblick 09.09.2018) breaks the results down this way (rounded here):

Social Democrats 28%
Moderates (a centrist party) 20%
Sweden Democrats 18%
Center Party (liberal in European sense) 9%
Left Party 8%
Christian Democrats 6%
Liberals (in European sense) 6%
Greens 4%
Other 1%

Polls had been showing a potential for as much as a 25% vote for the Sweden Democrats. So even though the party gained significantly over the previous election, it didn't achieve what for democracy supporters would have been the worse scendario of 25%.

It's dilemma enough as it is.

Sweden's current government headed by Prime Minister Stefan Lofven is a coalition of Lofven's Social Democratic party with the Greens, tolerated by the Left Party, which means the Left Party doesn't vote to change the governing coalition but is not a coalition partner and doesn't get ministries.

Nick Rigillo and Amanda Billner run through various post-election coalition options in , A Guide to Sweden’s Next Government After Its Inconclusive Election Bloomberg News 09/108/2018.

It's particularly notable that the two largest vote-getters in the election, the center-left Social Democrats and the center-right Moderates, did not win enough seats to be able to form a majority government by themselves.

Marco Giuli makes an important point.

Would appreciate to see it reported this way: in EU country with largest number of refugees per capita, 82% of voters did NOT vote for far-right nativists #SwedenElection #VAL2018

— Marco Giuli (@MarcoGiuli) September 9, 2018

In the 2015/early-2016 surge in immigrants and refugees into Europe, Germany famously accepted the largest number. But per capita relative to population, Sweden accepted the most, Austria second, and Germany third.

As I dig into immigration statistics in Europe, I've become more aware of the different ways refugee numbers can be parsed. I assume that Giuli is referring to net number of refugees. The numbers can also be parsed by gross numbers of immigrants. There is also a difference among the various concepts of refugees, political refugees, asylum seekers, economic refugees, and immigrants. The xenophobic groups in Austria and Germany prefer to talk about "migrants", to minimize the amount of distress from war and climate change that drives current immigration into Europe. "Migration" invokes less of an image of desperation than, say, "people fleeing for their lives beause they were about to get murdered in a civil war because of their religion."

One of the things that polls in Germany, Austria, and the United States show repeatedly is that people who live in areas where there are immigrants present in significant numbers and people who have personal contact with immigrants are less likely to support anti-immigrant parties than those who do not. There is a strong inverse relationship, in other words, between familiarity with living breathing immigrants and support for anti-immigrant parties and policies.

As imporant as it is to recognize the limited nature of the Sweden Democrats' win Sunday, it doesn't mean that there aren't serious problems for the established parties going forward. Jon Henley discusses this in Real story of Sweden's election is not about march of the far right Guardian 09/10/2018:

The real story of Sweden’s election is not, as the prevailing narrative has it, the irresistible onward march of Europe’s far right but the continuing decline of the major parties of government, the fragmentation of national votes and the rise of a number of smaller parties.

In a trend visible across Europe, the electoral base of the leading mainstream parties is shrinking. “The bigger parties are getting smaller and the smaller parties getting bigger,” said Sarah de Lange, a political scientist at the University of Amsterdam and a specialist in Europe’s radical right.

Across the continent, mainstream parties and alliances that once dominated national politics are in retreat, most notably on the left, making coalition-forming harder – even in countries, like Sweden, long used to coalition government – and producing weaker, potentially shorter-lived governments.

The neoliberal economic and social paradigm that both center-left and center-right parties have embraced over the past two decades and more, the Reagan-Thatcher notion of TINA, i.e., There Is No Alternative to pro-corporate and anti-labor policies, has failed in many ways. The EU's brutal and reactionary handling of the Greek debt crisis is probably the single most dramatic example.

I would argue that the failure of this model is also seen in the inability of the EU to achieve a practical and humane collective policy to address the chronic immigration crisis that has been here since at least 2011.

Since it was the traditional base of the center-left parties that have been the most obviously hurt by neoliberal failures, those parties have shown their loss of voter support more than the center-right in the last 15 years. But the trend is hitting the center-right parties, as well. As Henley notes of Sunday's election in Sweden, "the big established parties of the centre-left and centre-right, the Social Democrats and the Moderates, lost 6.3 points between them."

Iran and immigrtion to Europe

The flaws in the eurozone and mass immigration are two major problems of the EU that in some ways reinforce each other. And either of them individually could cause a serious breakdown in the EU or an even moer drastic reduction in its size than Brexit provides.

Christiane Hoffmann highlights the Middle East foreign policy aspects of the immigration crisis in a way that, it seems to me, the major media in Austria and Germany seriously neglect: the connection between American/NATO policies and actions in the Middle East and the immigration pressures on Europe. ("Die kommende Krise", Der Spiegel 33-2018/11.08.2018)

There are two centrally important pieces to the real existing immigration problem in Europe, as opposed to the phony ones created in the minds of xenophobic European politicians. (And the Russian propaganda that sometimes utilizes them for their own purposes.) One is that the world is undergoing a mass movement of people that seems to be more drastic than anything before in human history. This is being driven by climate change and various effects of globalization, like the driving down of wages, and the climate crisis and digitial communication.

Second are the wars in the Middle East. The acute phase of the immigration crisis in 2015 on which the rightwing populists are still surfing politically was driven in major part by the Syrian civil war - which was generated at least in part by a severe draught - as well as by the war in Afghanistan, which is part of what Andrew Bacevich calls the Greater Middle East, though the term hasn't caught on widely yet. The spectacularly ill-advised NATO intervention in Libya which resulted in Libya falling into a failed-state condition also contributed mightily.

I call mass immigration issue as a longterm crisis for Europe, that has acute phases like 2015. (That terminology also seems not to have caught on beyond myself, but I'm sticking with it!) A new acute wave could be activated by a war with Iran or by a decision on Turkey's part to stop holding the nearly 3 million refugees they are now housing and sending some large portion of them to Europe.

What Hoffmann says about EU policy in relation to Iran sounds to me like straighforward realism, which more often than not is a good thing:

Anfang November will Trump eine weitere Sanktionsrunde folgen lassen, dann soll Iran kein Öl mehr exportieren können, die USA wollen die Lebensader der iranischen Wirtschaft kappen. Die EU bemüht sich um das Atomabkommen, sie leistet Widerstand gegen die US-Sanktionen und sucht nach Wegen, um den Iranhandel trotz der amerikanischen Strafmaßnahmen aufrechtzuerhalten. Das ist richtig, aber nicht genug. Die Gefahr geht mittlerweile weit über ein Ende des Atomabkommens hinaus.

Es reicht deshalb nicht mehr, dass sich die Europäer für das Atomabkommen einsetzen. Sie müssen in Washington sehr deutlich sagen, dass die Politik der Destabilisierung Irans und des Nahen Ostens gegen die Sicherheitsinteressen Europas verstößt. Trumps Nahostpolitik muss zu einer Priorität der europäischen Politik werden. Deutschland und Europa brauchen jetzt, anders als in den vorangegangenen Krisen, endlich eine vorausschauende, präventive Außenpolitik.

{At the beginning of November, Trump wants to impose a wider round of sanctions, which are expected to stop Iran from exporting any more oil, because the US wants to cut off the vital lines of the Iranian economy. The EU is trying to stick with the nuclear agreement, it is resisting the US sanctions, and is looking for ways to maintain Iranian trade despite the American punitive measures. That is correct, but not enough. The danger in the meantime reach much further than the end of the nuclear agreement.

It is no longer sufficient for the Europeans to adhere to the nuclear agreement. The must also say very clearly to Washington that the policy of destabilization violates Europe's security interests. Trump's Near East policy needs to become a priority of European politics. Germany and Europe now reallyneed, differently than in the previous crises, a far-sighted, preventive foreign policy.}

Angela Merkel is rightly criticized for her extend-and-pretend solutions to problems of the EU. The classic example was the "bailout" of Greece in 2015, which imposed severe Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning austerity policies on a Greek economy already suffering a severe depression. And did so knowing that the measures would fail to fulfill their claimed purpose of restoring the economy - the "pretend" part. But the "extend" part was that it crushed the Greek opposition to the austerity madness and maintained the general neoliberal economic policies dominating the EU and did so without breaking up the eurozone with all the far-reaching consequences that would imply.

It's hard not to admire Merkel's skills as a political leader, however bad her policies may be. And it's true that kicking the can down the road, to use an American expression for extend-and-pretend, is usually an attractive option for politicians. And, in practical terms, sometimes the only feasible course when there is a political deadlock over an issue.

But it's one thing to kick the can down the road on a county zoning regulation. Doing so on the major problems that could wreck the EU is a whole different thing. As Hoffmann notes, Merkel herself has stated that ignoring the immigration issue too much prior to 2015 was a bad idea. And, to be realistic, Merkel during the immigration crisis in 2015 did seriously try to implement an EU-wide rule that actually would have provided a sensible and practical revision of the Dublin Regulations regime that had by then very plainly failed. But it was blocked by Czechia, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Also to be realistic, that failure during the acute immigration situation in 2015 was in significant part due to the stunning arrogance Merkel and other EU leaders showed in the Greek crisis that year. But that's a story for another time.

Hoffmann may be over-estimating the chances of Iran becoming a "second Syria," i.e., a country with a full-blown civil war. An external war initiated or encouraged by the Trump Administration is probably the greater danger. But Hoffmann's advice would still be well-taken. And at some point with real crises, the extend-and-pretend possibilties run out.

This is an August 5 English-language documentary on Iran from Deutsche Welle, Iran: from theocracy to regional superpower?

Merkel still pushes for a European solution to immigration issues

German Chacellor Angela Merkel is still trying to put her "European solution" to the immigration crisis together, nearly three years since the effort failed during the acute phase of the crisis in 2015.

On a visit to Spain's Social Democratic Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Merkel's renewed her push for an EU agreement establishing mandatory targets, i.e., quotas (although she doesn't use the word) for accepting the resettling immigrants to Europe that arrive in a irregular manner. That it, asylum seekers or refugees. The xenophobic parties and groups prefer to call them all "migrants," because that sounds more like voluntary or opportunistic immigration.

The overall number of refugees to Europe has declined drastically since the high point of 2015. But Spain is experiencing a higher number of arrivals this year compared to last. The xenophobes would like to claim that is because Spain now has a Social Democratic Chancellor that is open to immigration solutions compatible with EU and international law, as well as with some decent humane standard. The rightwing-dominated Italian government is claiming credit for causing the shift by refusing to accept emergency landings of ships that have rescued refugees at sea.

Fiona Ehlers et al explain the shift in "Aufruhr am Strand" Der Spiegel 32/2018 (04.08.2018). The translation below is mine from the print edition. Spiegel International has an English version, Spain Becomes New Target for Migrants 08/03/2018.

Es liegt aber nicht an Spanien, sondern vor allem an Marokko, dass immer mehr Migranten über die westliche Mittelmeerroute Europa erreichen. Spanische Seenotretter beobachteten schon im Juni, wie Menschen auf instabilen Schlauchbooten sogar tagsüber ungehindert in See stechen konnten - von Stränden nahe Tanger aus, aber auch aus Buchten im Osten bei Nador. Mehr als drei Dutzend Afrikaner segelten sogar auf einem Dinghi durch die Meerenge zu einem Strand im spanischen Tarifa. Am vorvergangenen Donnerstag gelang es rund 600 Migranten in der Exklave Ceuta den Grenzzaun zu überwinden.

Daten der EU-Grenzschutzagentur Frontex legen nahe, dass die Schleusermafia die Nachlässigkeit der marokkanischen Sicherheitskräfte ausnutzt. Offenbar versucht Marokko, der EU Zugeständnisse abzupressen, indem Spanien durch kaum kontrollierte Zuwanderung unter Druck gesetzt wird. Schon vor dem Regierungswechsel in Spanien fühlten sich Marokkos Regierende schlecht behandelt. Wahrend der Türkei von der EU sechs Milliarden Euro zugesagt wurden, hat Marokko für die Eindämmung der Flüchtlingsstrome in den vergangenen zehn Jahren nur hundert Millionen Euro erhalten. Seit Jahresbeginn wartet man außerdem auf Gelder, um die Grenzsicherung zu verstärken. Jetzt hat Kommissionspräsident Jean-Claude Juncker eine baldige Oberweisung zugesichert, der EU-Flüchtlingskommissar wollte in die Region reisen.

{It [the responsibility for the shift of migration routes more to Spain] is not because of Spain, but above all because of Morocco, which more and more migrants reach. Spanish sea rescuers observed already in June how people on unstable tube boats could enter the see unhindered for days at a time - coming from beaches near Tangier [in Morrocco] but also from bays near Nador [in Morocco].

Data from the EU border security agency Frontex indicates that the people-smuggling mafia are exploting the casual attitude of the Moroccan security forces. Morocco is obviously extorting EU officials to get concessions by putting Spain under pressure over its lightly controlled immigration. Even before the change of government in Spain [in June 2018], Morocco's rulers considered themselves poorly treated. While Turkey is given €6 billion [for detaining refugees headed to Europe], Morrocco in the last ten years has received only €100 million for the control of the refugee stream. In addition, they have waited since the beginning of the year to strenghen border security. Now the [EU] Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker has assurred an immediate review; the EU refugee commissioner would like to travel for the region.}

This is the kind of extend-and-pretend solution on which the EU relies, especially since 2015. The Dublin Regulation has governed EU immigration policy since 1997. It requires that refugees be registered in the first EU country in which they land and required to stay there until their cases are resolved. In the recent wave of refugees, that meant that Italy, Greece, and now Spain receive a large portion of the refugees. Merkel also made a key deal with Turkey in 2015, the one referred to in the Spiegel piece, by which Turkey to agreed to hold refugees. The number there is now approaching three million.

Turkey can do the same thing that Morocco is doing at any time and, if they choose, open a new round of inter-EU disputes like those that have been raging since 2015, despite the number of refugees in Europe having gone down drastically since 2015. This is how Turkey is intimately related to refugees in the EU. And why tensions with Turkey from the EU and within NATO involve a country that holds a big club it can whack them with. That's not at all to say that such an action by Turkey would be legal or defensible. But it's an important part of the web of relationships between Turkey and the EU.

Merkel, to her credit, is using the current time in which immigration to the EU has receded to try to work out a more practical and comprehensive solution.

At the EU summit this summer, Merkel secured a vague commitment for a European solution. But how long it will take for concrete steps to be taken in that direction is anybody's guest. Many EU countries are in no hurry.

Antonio Avendaño reports in Llámame Pedro. Llámame Angela El Plural 11.08.2018 that the Merkel-Sánche meeting seems to have been a friendly one. The two visited an immigration center. They seem to be on the same page on immigration, at least in the current moment.

Thomas Urban reports in Merkel fordert Neuordnung der europäischen Asylpolitik Süddeutsche Zeitung 11.08.2018 that Merkel reiterated that the Dublin Regulation is non-functional:

Die Bundeskanzlerin fügte hinzu: "Nach der Theorie dürfte nie ein Migrant oder ein Flüchtling in Deutschland ankommen." Die Realität sei jedoch eine andere. Seit langem fordern Politiker aus den EU-Staaten am Mittelmeer das Ende des Dublin-Systems. Denn laut dem Vertrag müssten sie die ganze Last der Migration tragen, während die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, die nur EU-Staaten zu Nachbarn hat, faktisch keine Asylanten aufnehmen müsste - es sei denn, diese erreichten einen deutschen Flughafen.

Kritisiert wurde auch, dass die Rahmenbedingungen für das Dubliner Abkommen von Anfang an nicht stimmten. Denn während die meisten südeuropäischen Staaten Asylbewerbern nur Kost und Logis stellen, können sie in der Bundesrepublik mit einer zusätzlichen Unterstützung von mehreren Hundert Euro pro Monat rechnen, ganz abgesehen davon, dass die Behörden bislang nur einen Bruchteil der Ausreisepflichtigen wirklich abschoben.

Die Kanzlerin sprach sich nun für ein neues Abkommen aus, das eine "gerechte Verteilung" der Asylbewerber unter den EU-Staaten vorsieht. Doch müssten auch die Migranten ohne Bleiberecht konsequent in ihre Heimatländer zurückgebracht werden. Bislang sind ihre Versuche, eine EU-weite Regelung durchzusetzen, allerdings an Polen, der Slowakei, Tschechien und Ungarn gescheitert. Dort wird argumentiert, dass es sich vor allem um ein deutsches Problem handle, da die allermeisten Migranten dorthin wollten.

{The Chancellor added: "In theory, [under the Dublin rules] there should never be a migrant or a refugee arriving in Germany." She says that the reality is different. For a long time, politicians from EU states on the Meditteranean Sea have requested the end of the Dublin system. Because according to the treaty's terms, they have to carry the complete burden of migration, while the Federal Republic of Germany, which has only EU states as neighbors, in fact is not required to take any asylum-seekers - even those that arrive at a German airport.

The legal framework of the Dublin Agreement has also been criticized from the start for being inappropriate. Because while most of the southern European states provided asylum-seekers only room and board, in Germany there can expect an additional support of more than €100, completely apart from the fact that the officilas up until now have really expelled only a small number.

Now the Chancellor spoke out for a new agreement that envisions are "just division" of asylum-seekers among the EU states. But the migrants that don't have a right to stay must be consistently returned to their home countries. So far, her attempts to push through an EU-wide regulation have run to ground, at least with PolandSlovakia, Czechia, and Hungary. There it is argued that this involves a German problem above all, because most all of the migrants want to go there.}

Clearly, once you get past the empty slogans of "close the borders" and the like, this is a very complicated political, logistic, and administrative problem. The left and center-right parties will have to find a way to defang the rightwing populist demogogy that has recently been disturbingly prominent in European politics.