Europe will adopt an Australian-style plan to block migrants arriving by sea, deploying the military, forcibly returning asylum-seeker boats and opening offshore processing centres in Africa.
The move comes as a senior European official warned “millions of people’’ from Africa would be “on our doorstep’’ within five years without urgent action.
Italy has announced plans to send its navy to patrol Libyan waters, in a bid to stop people-smugglers sending out would-be migrants in dangerous boats and inflatable rafts.
Migrants intercepted at sea as they tried to cross the Mediterranean would be returned to Libya.
And France intends to open offshore processing centres in Libya to deal with asylum claims before the migrants cross into Europe.
France, Germany and Italy will also provide additional funding to the Libyan coastguard to turn back the boats.
The moves mirror Australia’s controversial but highly effective Operational Sovereign Borders, launched in 2013, which deployed the military, used boat turn-backs and brought a complete halt to the people-smuggling trade operating from Indonesia.
The European Union had publicly described Australia’s policies as breaching international laws on returning would-be refugees to danger and said “of course’’ it would not be implemented in Europe.
However News Corp revealed in January the EU and six European countries had secretly asked for information on how it was implemented.
The new hard line on migration comes as the President of the European Parliament, Antonio Tajani, warned the continent was underestimating the scale of the problem.
More than 100,000 people have crossed the Mediterranean into Europe from Africa so far this year, and more than 2300 have drowned, as people-smugglers exploit political instability in Libya to operate with impunity.
Mr Tajani said population growth, climate change, wars and famine in Somalia and Sudan were driving the surge.
“When people lose hope, they risk crossing the Sahara and the Mediterranean because it is worse to stay at home, where they run enormous risks,’’ he told Italy’s Ill Messaggero newspaper.
“If we don’t confront this soon, we will find ourselves with millions of people on our doorstep within five years.
“Today we are trying to solve a problem of a few thousand people, but we need to have a strategy for millions of people.’’
Libya has consistently refused to allow the European Union’s anti-people smuggling mission Operation Sofia to operate in its territorial waters.
But Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni said last week Tripoli had invited Italian warships into its territorial waters to tackle the people-smugglers.
There are reports up to five Navy warships, 1000 sailors, planes, helicopters and drones would be used in the operation, which could begin by the end of this month.
Italy, geographically close to north Africa in the southern Mediterranean, has borne the brunt of the migrant wave, with more than 600,000 people arriving on their shores since 2014. The migrants are mainly young men from Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Eritrea.
Mr Gentiloni told reporters last week that he had spoken to European colleagues, who he did not identify, who supported his plans for Libyan waters.
“It pleases me to know there is a lot of support in Europe to this new possibility,” he said.
Also last week, French President Emmanuel Macron said France would process the claims of asylum-seekers in Libya before they tried to cross the Mediterranean, weeding out those without legitimate claims.
“The idea is to create hotspots to avoid people taking crazy risks when they’re not all eligible for asylum. We’ll go to them,’’ Mr Macron said while visiting a refugee centre in France.
His comments came after he helped broker a ceasefire between the two largest of Libya’s three main political factions, who have been fighting to fill the power vacuum left by the US-backed removal of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Mr Macron also warned that escaping poverty rather than war or persecution did not entitle someone to asylum in Europe.
“No country can take all the economic migrants,’’ he said.
Australian Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said Australia’s policies had “restored integrity to our borders.’’
“Australians support the Coalition Government’s tough decisions on borders because, like the Europeans, we don’t want to see women and children drowning at sea,’’ he said.
SOURCE: Courier Mail
