No one can say they were taken by surprise by the Calais crisis: it is nothing more than another manifestation of Europeans' dismay over the consequences of population movements that they face today. And, more broadly, faced with the impossibility of leaving the European construction where it is.
These population movements did not arise recently. They are even the source of the identity of the European nations, each bearing an invader's name and not that of a native people. Those are natural movements: in democracies, people go where the best living environments are available. Indeed, a dictatorship is revealed by the name given to those who want to escape it (the boat people, refusniks, balseros). Indeed, a genuine democracy is not possible within a territory without the free movement of goods, persons, and capital. It is this free movement which gives the United States its power. That is what has been Europe's weakness so far.
Worse: the Calais crisis announces that Europe intends to turn back the clock and return to the worst times of its history. This is what has been decided by Hungary, against a background of general indifference, by constructing a border fence, in breach of all the European treaties that this country has signed (furthermore, it is significant that the Grexit has been talked about so much while we never heard about the « Hungrexit,» which would, in my view, be preferable). That is what is threatening to happen at the Italian border, where France has sealed its border while at the same time criticizing the British for putting walls at the other end of the country. Yet the British response was foreseeable: « We are an island, and we intend to stay that way; we do what we want within our borders, in all hypocrisy, including providing jobs to undocumented migrants, to cut costs; we are not accountable to you and, if people hurry to Calais to come to our country, that's your business. It is up to you to stop them from doing that.»
It is absurd to expect a solution to this issue that is based purely on security: If today a thousand migrants are blocked in Calais and British attractiveness remains what it is, soon a million migrants will arrive at the border. The answer is elsewhere (Bernard Cazeneuve and Xavier Bertrand, for once they agree, put it very well): it is in harmonizing the various labor rights on the continent, so that it would be in the interest of no one to cross it to seek better refuge further. The European Union must therefore, once again, choose between progress in its integration, by harmonizing its social legislation, or back-pedaling, leaving its members to close their borders, to barricade, wall themselves off in voluntary prisons.
It is also in a much bolder management of migrants: Europe cannot refuse the right of asylum to those who suffer elsewhere as a result of torture and human rights violations - It's an honor. This reception policy does not incur the danger that jobs will escape EU citizens themselves: One must really have a low self-esteem to fear competition from people coming from war-stricken countries, having lost everything, not able to speak a single word in any language of the European Union and, in most cases, without necessary skills that can be used in our countries. Therefore, we must receive migrants, according to our ability to integrate them, to make them into citizens that we are being deprived of by our out-of-breath demography.
The solution is still in a much more active and common policy on the borders of Europe, by giving Frontex (European Agency for the Management of Operational Cooperation at the External Borders of the Member States of the European Union) the means of effective control of access to its territory, and ensure that none of them is tempted to renationalise this key component of sovereignty.
Finally, it is in its African and Middle Eastern policy: it is only by massively supporting the development of Africa and the stabilization of the Middle East that the EU will manage to stabilize, if not reverse, migratory flows as was done in the 80s with the countries of southern Europe. This will be one more opportunity to realize that altruism is the most intelligent form of selfishness. This is far from the reality.
j@attali.com