EU Action Plan Against Migrant Smuggling (EUC Report)

Lord Risby Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Risby (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Coussins, who will be greatly missed on our committee. I know I speak for all members of the committee when I pay tribute to the excellent chairmanship of my noble friend Lord Tugendhat. I thank him for so superbly chairing our proceedings and for so effectively summarising our report on Operation Sophia. I also applaud the work of the committee of the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar.

Every day, tragically, our television screens are filled with dramatic pictures of anxious people arriving in Italy from Libya. There are horrific reports of people drowning, seduced by criminal gangs into travelling in flimsy vessels, often having parted with their life savings. We have heard of the inadequacy of the remit of Operation Sophia and the inadequate resources to deal with the flow of migrants, but at least lives have certainly been saved.

There are 7 billion people living on our planet and there are millions who are on the move, who would like to be on the move or who plan to be on the move, either internally or externally. What is clear is that there is a very limited overall framework to deal with this phenomenon, even regionally in Europe. Public opinion all over the world is divided as to how, in practice, to deal with this, the phenomenon of our age, ranging from the compassionate to the violently antagonistic.

Of course, determining in principle and in practice how to distinguish between genuine refugees from war, violence and persecution and those simply seeking a better life, in order to react appropriately, is hugely difficult. Mercifully, we in this country do not have an extreme right wing but even perfectly legal migration to this country is clearly dramatically affecting public opinion. It is infecting public discourse in the United States and creating fissures in the European Union, and is something democratically elected politicians will not ignore. I mention this because what Operation Sophia has shown and the refugee influx has provoked is a need for a much more broadly based and coherent response from Europe.

In April 2014, working with the African Union, the EU agreed an action plan which focused on trafficking in human beings and all that flows from it. In part, the object of the exercise was to find a balance that would enable defined migrants who make it to Europe to be integrated successfully, and to deal with the issue of remittances, while looking towards the root cause of the migratory flows. This was taken further later that year with the Khartoum process, aimed at enhancing existing co-operation and specifically addressing the issue of people trafficking and smuggling. I therefore welcome the orientation of the EU Regional Development and Protection Programmes towards north Africa, the Horn of Africa and Nigeria, as recently proposed by the European Commission. A pilot project in Niger will encourage local protection and resettlement opportunities and offer assisted voluntary return options. Under the common security and defence policy, a key meeting this autumn with the African Union will try jointly to further address irregular migration, with all its ramifications.

Of course, greater political stability in Libya is the key to the more immediate resolution of the cross-Mediterranean flows. Sadly, there are very limited grounds for optimism at this time. However, I note that yesterday the United Nations Security Council unanimously authorised a crackdown on arms smuggling on the high seas of Libya, allowing the inspection of vessels to seize and dispose of illicit weapons, which are undoubtedly the source of terrorist activity in Libya by extreme radical groups. All this is important in both reassuring European public opinion and trying to bring about some acceptable governance to the chaotic situation in Libya.

What I have described are simply parts of what our report made clear: that the EU must with urgency develop a strategy that tries to tackle mass, irregular migration at source. Last week the European Commission proposed a new partnership framework with third countries, based upon the European agenda on migration. The aim is a good one: to deliver coherent EU engagement to encourage member states to combine their respective instruments and tools, and to agree to a collective compact with third countries in order better to manage migration, giving direct encouragement to those third countries to co-operate in migration management. A substantial sum of money has been envisaged for this purpose.

Clearly, and ultimately, this phenomenon of our time, mass migration, will require something even more comprehensive and a fresh architecture. In 1990, the UN agreed the Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families. Of course, many countries today are extremely sensitive to what they perceive as unwarranted interference by regional or international organisations. However, building on what is now emerging in Europe, it would be useful and important for a more international process to be considered, by trying to bring together existing protocols and by examining the responses and practices of different countries.

If this is seen as something far into the realms of impossibility and impracticality, it is worth noting that in the last few years we have acted internationally in considering the consequences of the environmental degradation of our planet and the destruction of forests and wildlife. But the human, worldwide migratory challenge is now centre stage, and we ignore it at our peril. Operation Sophia has simply highlighted one facet of the enormous difficulties surrounding international migratory flows, but I hope that, through this report, it has added something to the necessary and inevitable debate about how to deal with the greatest human and social challenge of our age.