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The European migration system is once again under pressure to the breaking point. For the second year in a row, the passport-free Schengen zone will welcome more than 1mn asylum applications, the highest figure since the surge in Syria and elsewhere in 2015-16. Germany has imposed temporary controls on its land borders, under pressure to clamp down on irregular migration after a stabbing incident by a suspected Islamist migrant; the far-right Alternative for Germany party meanwhile won its first victory in a state parliament vote. Meanwhile, Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has been giving advice to British candidate Keir Starmer on curb Sea crossings are irregular, but some of the methods used by Italy – and its neighbours – are highly questionable.
Continental Europe and the UK face a similar paradox. Rising migration (particularly irregular) is a lightning rod for discontent among hard-pressed voters, fuelling support for extremist parties. Yet tight labour markets and ageing populations mean that much of Europe is in urgent need of migrant labour. The EU’s working-age population shrank by 5 million to 264 million in the decade to 2021; by 2050, Europe may have fewer than two working-age adults for every older person.
In April, the EU adopted a new Pact on Migration and Asylum aimed at curbing irregular arrivals and due to come into force in 2026, but Hungary and Poland opposed it because of their migrant-sharing quotas. Some countries are already seeking to dismantle it. However, tackling irregular arrivals must be the foundation of a successful policy. Experience elsewhere suggests that citizens are more tolerant of migration if they perceive borders to be properly protected. Canada, for example, a difficult country to access for irregular migrants, has long had generous legal immigration programmes (although even there, rising living costs have fuelled a reaction).
The EU needs to devote more resources to securing its external borders, including opening more processing centres and hiring more lawyers and translators to ensure that applications are processed quickly and those who fail to do so are quickly expelled. This, in turn, requires reaching return agreements with safe countries from which many asylum seekers come, with incentives such as more assistance and preferential access to legal migration programmes.
For practical and cost reasons, it is inevitable that some asylum seekers will have to be housed and processed abroad. But, following well-documented mistreatment of vulnerable migrants in some places, new pacts with countries such as Turkey, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt must involve greater European and international oversight, and be conditional on upholding migrants’ human rights. And EU leaders must avoid “pushbacks”, or measures to force migrants to return to their home countries, which are cruel, ineffective and often illegal.
Italy’s offshore processing agreement with Albania is seen by some as a turning point, but it is based on close historical ties between Rome and Tirana and does not necessarily provide a model. For Great Britainor others. It differs from the atrocious plan of the previous Conservative government of the United Kingdom to send some irregular immigrants migrants to rwandaas the facilities in Albania will be staffed by Italians and successful applicants will go to Italy (the UK plan would have left them in Rwanda). But human rights groups still consider the scheme, which has not yet begun, to be fraught with risks of abuse.
To reduce the incentives for irregular immigration and those who benefit from it, European countries must manage legal immigration pathways more effectively. Political leaders should be more honest with voters about the economic necessity of such inflows, provide the infrastructure to support them, and make a clearer distinction with illegal arrivals. None of this will be cheap or easy; at best, it may be a partial solution. But the costs and efforts will be worth it if they create more political space for the immigration that Europe needs and silence the siren calls of extremists.