The EU is washing its hands of its responsibility and putting the burden on Africa

EU-Africa Ministerial Conference on Migration

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 13th November 2015, Nicosia

The overhyped EU-Africa Ministerial Conference on migration in Valletta Malta has regretfully ended with yet another show of hypocrisy on the part of the European leaders. There was no substantive change in EU policy. Wars and foreign intervention will continue. “Fortress Europe” will continue to erect fences and construct concentration camps. EU Member States will continue not agreeing to a fair distribution for the accommodating of the refugees. Legal and safe accesses to the EU for refugees to apply for asylum will not be created. The military operations to destroy vessels along the coasts of North Africa will proceed unobstructed, trapping thousands of people in war stricken and impoverished areas, with no way out for them to survive.

In addition, the EU’s pledges for aid to Africa are extremely meagre. The long-standing commitment of Member States to provide development aid of up to 0.7% of their GDP remains an empty meaningless slogan. The EU’s unequal and exploitative trade and economic relations with African states will continue to reproduce the vicious circle of underdevelopment and poverty, which of course has its origin in African continent’s colonial past. These are the root causes of migration, which are not addressed in the measures adopted by the Conference.

The only substantive development in the Valletta Conference is negative. The EU is promoting more forcefully the so-called “externalization process” of the control of its borders, by making the African states the EU’s watchdogs and border guards. Now and again with “incentives” and at times through blackmail, the EU is imposing on the African states to hold back – by any means – the refugees and migrants, but for them to also accept them back when they will find the EU’s doors shut. As a matter of fact, among the countries with which the EU will cooperate and support financially, are also dictatorships, from which their very citizens are fleeing from. In other words, the EU wants to make others do the “dirty” work and is washing its hands in front of the chaos created as a result of its own actions too.

The Anastasiades government must inform the people of Cyprus about the position it took at the Conference. Is it satisfied with the role the EU plays on the refugee question? Does it still believe that the EU expresses in practice the overhyped values ​​of European solidarity and humanism? Finally, the President must state his position on the role that his European likeminded associates are planning to assign to Turkey and clarify what positions Cyprus will support in the upcoming EU-Turkey Summit.