It began in the summer of 2018. First there were dozens, then hundreds of people per day, who sat in dinghies in Morocco and came across the Straits of Gibraltar to Spain. Tirelessly the Spanish sea rescue was in use. On Twitter, Facebook, in newspapers and on television, it was possible to see how exhausted migrants escaped the boats or were brought dead on land. Even in the winter it did not get much better, in December there were still 5,000 people arriving by sea in Spain - ten times as many as in 2015, at the peak of the migration movement.
Then the Spanish government closed a deal with Morocco - and suddenly the number of newcomers collapsed. 4104 were according to the UN-migration authority IOM in January, only 936 in February. A decline of almost 80 percent within a month. The tactics of the Spaniards followed a proven script: countries of origin and transit should refuse refugees and migrants or take back - and get in return, inter alia, visa facilitation, military equipment and, above all, a lot of money.
Many such deals also exist between other EU countries and third countries; Spain alone has concluded readmission agreements with 16 countries. The European Commission wants to unify the patchwork now apparently. That is at least suggested by the draft of a readmission agreement between the EU and Morocco, which is SPIEGEL.
Far-reaching duties, extremely short deadlines
The Commission sent the confidential paper to the EU Member States at the beginning of July. According to diplomats, the treaty is intended to be a blueprint for future agreements with other major refugee and migrant countries of origin, "so that in the end not every EU state has its own rules," a Brussels official says.
The design has it all. Morocco should therefore commit itself not only to withdraw its own citizens, but also those who were previously deprived of Moroccan citizenship. Even citizens of other states should return to Morocco if they have traveled illegally through the country en route to the EU. If Europe were a fortress, Morocco would be part of the moat, where all those who do not make it over the walls would land.
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On the go: "Europe would be an opportunity for us"This is also supported by the fact that the EU wants to set extremely short deadlines for the Moroccan government:
- If it is proven that a migrant is a Moroccan citizen, Morocco should issue him with travel documents within ten days.
- If the Moroccan authorities fail to respond in time, the redemption request will automatically be considered approved.
- If the person in question has a valid Moroccan visa, the authorities in the country should no longer be in high demand. Then the transfer should be made "without readmission request or without written notification". After all, the cost of repatriation up to the Moroccan border should be borne by the EU country concerned.
It is unclear to what extent Morocco is prepared to accept these conditions. According to the EU Commission, discussions are currently underway "at the working level". It is also clear what should help them succeed: money. "For nothing," says an EU diplomat, "the North Africans are not playing along."
This has been recognized in Spain. In mid-July, the government in Madrid transferred 30 million euros to Rabat, as an aid in the fight against illegal migration. Two weeks earlier, she had already approved a € 26 million public tender for the purchase of equipment, which was then to be "donated" to Morocco. Among them were, according to a report in the newspaper "El Pais" 750 vehicles, 15 drones and numerous other technical devices for border control.
Hundreds of millions of euros for Morocco
Morocco got a lot more from Brussels. According to the Commission, since 2014, the EU has paid € 232 million related to migration, with € 148 million spent last year alone on various border management and anti-migrant programs.
But money alone is unlikely to persuade Morocco to agree to the ambitious readmission agreement. "For this, there should be the concrete promise of visa liberalization, as the EU has granted Ukraine," says Gerald Knaus, head of the European Stability Initiative (ESI). This is also reflected in the EU refugee pact with Turkey, which Knaus has helped to shape: "Ankara only took the EU's offer seriously when visa liberalization was on the table."
There was a joint statement in June 2019, in which the EU promised Morocco, among other things, improvements in legal migration and visa issuance. But since then, according to diplomats, there has been no major progress. "And as long as the EU does not offer Morocco a specific visa schedule, it does not mean it," says Knaus.
"The EU has learned nothing"
Morocco's motivation for cooperation is not the only problem with the planned EU agreement. According to Knaus, another is the asylum procedure in Spain. Most migrants who have come from Morocco have not applied for asylum in Spain so far, because they will not be sent back anyway. That would change quickly if Morocco were ready to take back.
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Migrant in the Spanish exclave Ceuta: "busy for years"
"If everyone coming to Spain via the sea would apply for asylum there, the Spanish system would be busy for years," says Knaus. "In 2018, 60,000 came and the asylum authority made 12,000 decisions." In turn, according to figures from the EU statistics office Eurostat, only around 7,000 deportations were carried out. An agreement on the repatriation of third-country nationals to Morocco is therefore "not feasible without reforms in the Spanish asylum system and EU assistance," says Knaus.
And that does not apply only to Spain. For similar reasons, repatriation to Turkey still does not work. "It takes years to make a final decision in most member states," says Knaus. "Setting up an agreement with Morocco that ignores all the lessons of recent years is absurd." The draft shows "an EU that has not learned anything yet". He was "meaningless in its current form," says Knaus. "This will not reduce irregular migration and dying in the Mediterranean."
However, at the moment it seems unlikely that the EU will move in visa and asylum matters. The large-scale reform of the EU asylum system has not come off for months. One reason: The seven-law package also aims to regulate the distribution of asylum seekers. But several EU states stubbornly refuse to talk about it. "They want to be sure beforehand," says an EU diplomat, "that they also get rid of rejected asylum seekers."
