The European Commission is setting up a €1.8bn “trust fund” for Africa and has urged member states to match that sum.
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“It is the starting point of a new way of dealing with Africa about the issue of migration, maybe a more realistic way, a more responsible way, but also a way in which we want to share with the Africans the solutions to these problems”, he said.
The summit chair, European Council President Donald Tusk, told the Maltese parliament of the strains that threaten the policy of open borders within the EU, with Africa’s population set to double by 2050 and many fleeing the Middle East.
But after lengthy negotiations it was cut from a final version of the “action plan”, obtained by the Telegraph, being discussed by the two continents’ leaders in Malta today. “We are looking how we can invest in a few of the causes of migration while also saying to them there is clearly more they can do”. But refugees voiced fear that the fencing may be a harbinger of other Slovenian restrictions and that “control” could change quickly to interdiction.
Co-operation arrangements take various forms such as bilateral or regional policy dialogues, agreements on visa facilitation and readmission, and funding or operational support from EU Agencies such as Frontex.
European Union chiefs plan to offer their African counterparts funds at a summit in Malta in exchange for help stemming a migrant influx generating political and economic headaches for governments across Europe. “Such identification missions will take place in the first quarter of 2016 with at least 10 African countries” the document states.
News of the latest tragedy comes as new EU data shows the union’s asylum system is so clogged with applications that it would take a year to clear the backlog even if migrants stopped coming to Europe immediately.
Yet discussion is expected to be smooth.
Plans to introduce a “laissez passer”, an EU-issued travel document that would allow thousands of failed asylum seekers who had destroyed or lost their paperwork to be sent home, appeared to have been scrapped after African leaders said it had no precedent in global law.
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But a number of humanitarian organisations and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) cautioned against linking development aid to African countries to efforts to reduce migration. The North African country, one of the major gateways for migrants crossing the Mediterranean, has been torn between two capitals – in Tobruk and Tripoli – and until the last minute it was unclear if any Libyan official would be at the summit. For people being returned to transit countries, they risk being stranded there without legal status, and at risk of violations of their rights, such as the right to asylum, the right to liberty, and the right to work. “David Cameron should be leading by example here, but while the government has committed to resettle, over five years, 20,000 refugees from camps on Syria’s borders, what we’ve had from the United Kingdom so far has been overwhelmingly focused on keeping people out. Refugees and migrants deserve and are entitled to better”, said Iverna McGowan, Acting Director of Amnesty International’s European Institutions Office. That compares with 662,000 in 2014, 464,000 in 2013 and 373,000 in 2013.
