The EU’s phoney war on people smugglers is costing the lives of desperate migrants

This week’s Vienna summit on migration in the Western Balkans was the latest lost opportunity. Meeting against the backdrop of 2,400 migrant deaths in the Mediterranean, the gruesome discovery of 70 decomposing migrant bodies in a lorry on an Austrian motorway, and human suffering on an epic scale across the EU’s borders, the summit produced expressions of anguish, a tiny dollop of humanitarian aid, and commitments to strengthened border controls.

The EU’s response to the migrant crisis has followed a gloomily predictable trajectory: while a criminally under-funded search-and-rescue operation saves lives in the Mediterranean, European governments wage a war of words against people smugglers. They ramp-up spending on fences and border-controls, and issue warnings of deportation for the ‘swarms’ of ‘irregular’ migrants seeking entry to Europe.

All of which fuels a moral panic over refugees and deflects attention from the debate that needs to happen. That debate is about forced human displacement on a scale unwitnessed since the Second World War – and about an asylum system broken beyond repair.

Source: The Independent