Hard EU line on migration rose from the ashes of compassion

Japan Times

24-06-2025

A decade ago, the image of a 3-year-old Syrian boy washed up dead on a Turkish beach prompted an outpouring of emotion and renewed commitments from European governments to take in refugees fleeing Syria's brutal civil war.
Alan Kurdi drowned alongside his mother and brother when a rubber dinghy headed for Greece sank off the coast of Turkey in September 2015.
A decade later, thousands of people escaping hardship, conflict and climate disasters still risk their lives on similarly perilous boat journeys to Europe.
But the reception they might get has changed.
Ten years ago, the European Union vowed as one to prevent further loss of life at sea. Now, keeping migrants out is the key goal, as governments play to right-leaning voters.
Rights groups and policy experts say the future for these people is becoming even more precarious as the EU looks set to further harden its restrictions on migration.
"All of this started in 2015, and measures are getting even stricter," said Josephine Liebl, head of advocacy at the European Council on Refugees and Exiles (ECRE), an alliance of nongovernmental organizations.
Last year, the EU overhauled its rules with a new Pact on Asylum and Migration that aims to limit irregular entry to the bloc and speed the asylum process.
"For people arriving in Europe, it will become more difficult to access an asylum procedure in the first place and for that procedure to actually assess their claim fairly," Liebl said.
The arrival of an unprecedented 1 million refugees in 2015 sparked a crisis in the EU, which over the last decade has attempted to reform its asylum system to ease the burden on front line states such as Greece and Italy.
A member of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency points as his colleague uses binoculars during a patrol near the Albania-Greece border, in Kapshtica near Korce, Albania, in July 2019. |
reuters
At the same time, anti-immigrant feeling has gained momentum, encouraged by the rise of the far right.
The bloc has also increasingly sought to push the problem beyond its borders, making deals with third countries and reinforcing its physical and legal entry points.
'Golden age of solidarity'
Even before Kurdi died, his image galvanizing the bloc, a shipwreck that claimed the lives of over 600 people in April 2015 had driven migration to the top of the EU's policy agenda.
Then, the bloc's main aims were not far off what they are today: fighting people traffickers, preventing illegal migration and reinforcing solidarity across the bloc.
But the EU also pledged emergency aid to front line states receiving the most refugees and tripled its funding of naval missions to strengthen rescue operations in the Mediterranean.
In 2020, when the EU reaffirmed its support to border countries, it emphasized bolstering border guard capabilities — not humanitarian aid.
Berna Turam, a researcher at Northeastern University in Boston, said there was "a golden age of solidarity" pre-2019, when compassion outweighed anti-immigrant, populist forces.
Europeans felt sympathy for refugees camping in their public squares and strong grassroots movements tempered the xenophobic narratives, her research found.
"The main change between then and now is the perception of (migrants) as criminals, potential terrorists and people who are going to destroy order and stability," said Turam.
"The mood changed because of EU policies criminalizing people at the borders."
Turning point
In 2016, the EU pledged €3 billion ($3.45 billion) to support Syrians — then also poured money into strengthening surveillance tech and support for its border agency Frontex.
Under a deal that year, Turkey agreed to take back migrants and refugees who cross irregularly into Greece from its shores.
The islands effectively became a holding pen for refugees and migrants, barred from advancing their EU asylum claims and restricted to a camp life lived in limbo.
"Because these people got confined it suggested they were criminals," said Turam.
As the EU continued to enlist the help of non-EU countries, plying North African nations with kit and training to keep migrants out, fear spread — and with it, support for political parties that talked tougher on migration.
The far-right vote
Across Europe, voters have steadily shifted right.
Far-right and populist parties have made gains in Italy, Finland, Croatia, Czech Republic, Sweden, Germany and Austria, as well as in the European Parliament.
In Germany, the most popular country for asylum seekers since 2015, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a record share of seats in February, becoming the biggest opposition party, and the new coalition government has pledged to crack down on migration.
"It is normal for people to believe that the far right is doing well because of people's immigration positions, but the far-right vote is about economic insecurity and austerity," said Claire Kumar, who researches public attitudes toward migration at think tank ODI Europe.
ODI's analysis of the European Social Survey, carried out every two years to measure beliefs across Europe, found attitudes toward migration as a whole were more negative after the 2008 financial crisis than after the 2015 migration crisis.
Nonetheless, the far right's anti-immigrant rhetoric has kept the issue in the limelight, said Kumar.
"[The EU] has adopted a narrative based on far-right discourse, and they've amplified it and allowed it to shape their policies and spending," said Kumar.
Lawmakers are already proposing harsher policies and considering how to send people back, said Martha Roussou of the International Rescue Committee, a humanitarian aid organization.
"Things will change for the worse," said Roussou.