EU musters resources against illegal migration - by Ingrid Melander
With thousands of Africans braving the perilous journey to Europe’s southern coasts of Spain, Malta and Italy, the European Union’s 25 nations want to take a tougher line. “We are moving towards a militarisation of the management of this crisis,” said Daphne Bouteillet-Paquet of human rights group Amnesty International’s EU office. Fortress Europe “is a cliche but it remains true,” she said.
The sea patrol will try to intercept illegal migrants before they leave African waters and head for the Canary Islands, where more than 10,000 landed this year, compared with around 4,700 last year. Hundreds more are believed to have died on the way.
The EU is the world’s biggest aid donor, with figures showing its countries provided $43.3 billion in 2004, over half of all international aid.
Member states agreed last year to boost aid spending to 0.56 percent of gross national income by 2010 and 0.7 percent by 2015. They also agreed that half of the increase in aid would go towards Africa. Bouteillet-Paquet said the focus of the draft EU-African plan drawn up in Dakar was more on repressive measures than aid. Collett feared the EU was trying to shift the burden of dealing with sub-Saharan migrants to North African countries.
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