Migrant numbers coming into Europe set to increase, says expert

The number of migrants coming into Europe from the Middle East and Africa is going to increase rather than diminish in the years ahead, according to one of the top EU officials dealing with the issue.

Pierre Vimont, the special envoy of European Council president Donald Tusk on the migration issue, told the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin yesterday that co-ordinated European action was now imperative to deal with the issue.

He said the issue of migration was a complex one. Political refugees comprised one part of the equation but economic migration was a far bigger issue in the long term.

“Structural migration is here to stay,” said Mr Vimont. “We won’t be able to stop them and we can’t act as if we do not have an obligation to deal with them.”

Co-ordinated response

He expressed confidence that in spite of the scale of the problem the European Union would be able to devise a co-ordinated response just as it had been able to do with the financial crisis even if it took some time. “It is easy to make decisions about what should be done but human and financial resources have to follow.”

Mr Vimont said migration was not a new problem in Europe or elsewhere but what made it different was its sheer magnitude.

Current conflict

He said the Middle East had had to cope with a refugee crisis long before the current conflict in Syria. There were still Palestinian refugee camps in that country and in Lebanon.

Mr Vimont also pointed out there were huge refugee problems in Africa with Ethiopia and Kenya having to deal with massive numbers fleeing from Somalia. “While there has been amazement in Europe at the scale of the crisis it has been building for a long time but the pace has been accelerating.”

He said there were two major migration routes into Europe. One was from the Middle East through Turkey and into the EU through Greece.

The other route was from Africa across the Mediterranean to Italy or Malta. Some were political refugees but the bulk of them were economic migrants. “This is a more long term structural migration and it is here to stay,” he said.