Brexit: the only people in the way are eurosceptics

02/07/2014

Version 17 of Flexcit is just off the stocks, at 271 pages, bringing it that much closer to finishing. I'm now having to think about whether we do a separate chapter for each of the main EU policies - in which case it's going to be a very long book – or whether we should deal with them in broad brush terms.

As it stands, I've only dealt, at chapter length, with three policy areas: environment, agriculture and fisheries. Each of these has special features that make an in-depth look appropriate. But one could look at others – say, foreign policy and defence, regional policy, and certain others. I would appreciate view on where to go on this.

Another policy I've looked at in depth is immigration. Here, there is no specific EU policy relating to external migration, which makes it a shared competence shared competence, with member states often taking the lead.

With that, I am making progress, developing theme of "push-pull" factors as the primary means of limiting migration, and as a mechanism for by-passing the "freedom of movement" provisions of the EU/EEA treaties, dealing with the causes of the problem rather than the symptoms.

The staggering thing about this, though, is just how shallow politicians are. And we're not just talking about UKIP here. Interviewed yesterday was former Home Affairs commissioner Franco Frattini, on how to ease the pressure on southern nations like Italy.

Frattini, the man who was the EU's top migration official from 2004 to 2008, argues that EU asylum and immigration rules need to be overhauled in the name of greater burden-sharing, coming up with a "four-point plan".

First of all, he says, is the "mother of all problems" is the so-called Dublin regulation, which, he says, "stipulates that incoming migrants can only claim asylum in the first EU country they enter".

He describes the rule as "the biggest obstacle to the application of the solidarity principle that everybody invokes, at least in words," adding that "people who have been granted asylum should be free to move anywhere in the EU".

Southern countries like Italy, which are the first port of call for boat migrants, complain that the Dublin system places undue stress on them. Northern EU states with more generous asylum regimes, like Sweden, fear they would be swamped if the rules were changed.

Actually, it isn't quite that simple. The regulation creates a hierarchy of responsibility for dealing with asylum seekers but, crucially, there is a special twist for "illegal" immigrants.

If the asylum seeker has "irregularly" crossed the border into a member state, it is that member state which ends up with the responsibility for examining the asylum application.

A canny migrant, landing in Italy, however, will evade processing formalities (sometimes with the complicity of the authorities) and head northwards to Calais. A quick trip across the Channel and the "irregular" migrant is in England claiming asylum before you can say "Tony Blair".

In other words, while Mr Frattini doesn't like the system very much, it doesn't suit any country very much. But no one knows how to change it for the better.

As to the second of Frattini's complaints, he takes the view that so-called "economic migrants", chasing work, should be distributed across the bloc according to quotas, taking into account host nations‘ "economic needs, size and reception capacity".

"It would be an enormous step forward in the name of an equitable burden-sharing," he insists, stressing that Germany would not be penalised from the reform, because "it already hosts many migrants from the East".

But, with almost a puckish sense of humour (one assumes), Frattini suggests that Poland and other central European nations would have room to take in more people. He says the quota system is an idea initially put forward by European Parliament President Martin Schulz - a German Social Democrat. And so we have the biter bit.

Third on Mr Frattini's list is Frontex, the EU border agency. It needs to be transformed into a full-blown "European border police corps," according to Frattini, who says he pushed the idea as EU commissioner in 2006, but it did not get anywhere due to "widespread opposition".

Finally, the man until recently responsible for the EU's migrant problem, says his country - facing a record influx of boat migrants from North Africa - deserves more help from Brussels. He wants the current EU Home Affairs Commissioner, Cecilia Malmström, to be more forceful in looking after the needs of the front line countries.

If one stands back from all this, though, it really does invite the Tipperary joke – the one that ends: "I wouldn't start from here".

What is missing, however – as sharp-eyed readers will notice – is any reference to mitigation. An ex-Commissioner should be aware if this, The Commission has been very keen on "push-me, pull-you", coined on his watch in 2007.

This is why we have to get out, and why we eventually will. The politicians have lost it. They have a system they don't understand, and have run out of ideas on how to make it better.

Nevertheless, that does no mean that leaving is going to be any easier – the academics seem to have lost it as well.

Highlighted at the top of this piece is a cut from Tim Oliver, writing on the LSE blog. He claims to write on how a "Brexit" might occur in practice, offering "five ways in which the UK might leave the European Union", noting that even if the country were to give up its membership there would still be a number of unresolved questions as to the kind of UK-EU relationship which could emerge.

Agog to know what the LSE has to say, we find the man is frittering away his time – and ours – on telling us that we might use Article 50, the government might make a unilateral decision to withdraw, the EU could expel Britain, it could engineer a "passive expulsion" from the EU – messing us about so much that we leave in disgust – or through a slower and gradual process of changes to the EU whereby Britain does not leave the EU, but the EU leaves Britain behind.

This, then, is the offering from academia. One can only wonder whether they are being deliberately obtuse, or simply missing the point. But if people have never heard of the EEA, we can thank academic such as Tim Oliver for spreading the ignorance.

On the other hand, Wolfgang Schäuble is telling us that the UK is an essential, indispensable component of the European unity. The EU without the UK, he says, "is absolutely not acceptable, unimaginable". Therefore we have to do everything, so that the interests and the positions of the UK find themselves sufficiently [represented] in European politics.

Hugo Dixon of Reuters adds to the pain, telling us that a "Brexit" would harm the rest of the EU as well as the UK, which makes the behaviour of the "colleagues" over Juncker rather ill-advised.

But, they've left it too late. The only people that can stop the UK leaving the EU now are the eurosceptics, which is why we should read Complete Bastard as well. There is time yet to get it right - we don't have to lose it as well.

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