According to the Austrian-based International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), Europe will face a new wave of migration crisis in 2024.
Data from the EU for 2023 shows more than 1m asylum applications were made in 2023, up by about 20% on 2022 and the highest number since 2016, according to the ICMPD. 2024 will see the increase of these figures. The number of illegal migrants expected to be huge also.
The war in the Middle East and in Ukraine, the prospect of Donald Trump regaining power in the United States would lead to huge flows of people seeking a better life, according to the ICMPD's annual report.
The more so, in mid-December, the European Parliament and 27 member states agreed on a far-reaching reform to EU migration and asylum policy. The new laws to be implemented in two to three years. The reform provides for stricter procedures, such as how asylum-seekers with little chance of success will be received at borders. They are to be housed in detention-like conditions -- with no exceptions for families with children.
So, new migration laws agreed by the EU late last year would initially be a magnet rather than a deterrent for many who would try to get to Europe before they come into force later this year, the report said.
A number of human rights organizations have sharply criticized the planned regulations.
They insist that the agreement won't resolve the key problems. Thus, the increased responsibility of the countries at the borders will force them responding by engaging in more pushbacks and denials of access at the borders.
So, these arrangements are highly controversial from a human rights perspective. The planned border procedures will also require further cooperation with countries that take in rejected asylum-seekers. But transit countries have no real interest in taking back people who have been deported from third countries.
Some experts believe that asylum policy agreement was needed just to slow the rise of right-wing populists, and not really to cope with the migration crisis. European parliamentary elections are due to take place in June, and migration has often played a major political role in many member state polls. They are also skeptical that the new asylum rules can help to make the issue less explosive, because the reality is that migration will continue.
In case the migration policy is not balanced and properly developed, the crisis is inevitable.
Europe should admit that it really needs migrants. Contrary to the xenophobic message of many anti-immigrant, far-right politicians, experts said Europe needed migrants if the EU wants to maintain a sufficiently robust workforce, with shortages across the bloc.
The EU commissioner Ylva Johansson recently cited the need for 1 million more workers in the EU to keep pace with demographic change, saying it was "a challenge to do that in an orderly way". According to other experts, the numbers are even much higher, with 1 million needed in Germany alone and 500,000 in Austria.
So, Europe needs migrants as much as migrants need Europe. The compromise is to be found. The question arises how many people will die along borders until the right decision is made.
