Qaddafi, the EU's mirror

Why the EU should not simply dismiss the Libyan leader's demand for money to help curb immigration

When Colonel Muammar Qaddafi in late August asked the European Union ?5 billion a year to help him stop illegal immigration pouring into the EU, it seemed just the latest of Qaddafi's many eccentricities. By threatening the EU to become one day a "black" continent, Qaddafi cleverly played on Europe's irrational fears, guaranteeing headlines of European newspapers.

Nonetheless, Qaddafi's statement had the merit of highlighting the contradictions of the EU's migration management policy over in the past decade.

The co-option of non-EU countries, especially African, to help halt illegal migration has become daily routine. Control of borders and migration has been 'extra-territorialised' to EU's neighbours. Technology and know-how are being transferred to non-EU countries to control migrants before they reach Europe's shores or airports. Third countries are being pushed to compete in being good students in the field of border and migration management and to attract EU's money. The more efficient they are, the more financial help they get. When they do not co-operate, the EU does not hesitate putting the blame on the governments that do not co-operate.

Qaddafi, though, can dictate his own terms. Some important member states - such as Italy, France and the UK -have been wooing Libya (particularly since it renounced to weapons of mass destruction in 2005), seeing it as a crucial ally in the fight against illegal immigration and as a key energy partner that needs to be well treated. This is not the first time that Libya has used the leverage this brings. When Switzerland imposed a visa ban on senior members of Qaddafi's regime, in a bilateral dispute that began with the Swiss police's detention of Qaddafi's son for violent behaviour and escalated to the arrest of Swiss businessmen, Libya introduced a visa ban on everyone from the 25-member Schengen area in a bid to encourage EU states to apply pressure on Switzerland. Several EU states pushed hard and the EU's rotating presidency became engaged. The dispute eventually ended this spring.

While Libya's power is exceptional, Qaddafi shows up contradictions in Europe's efforts to build a borderless Europe while co-operating with unscrupulous regimes. Libya is not a party to the 1951 Geneva Convention and when, last June, Qaddafi clashed with the UN about the concept of refugees in international law, he closed down the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Tripoli. Yet Italy, for example, appears to have no qualms about intercepting migrants' boats and shipping them back to Libya.

Expanding grey areas

Protecting the EU's external borders does not necessarily entail a trade-off with the EU's core values. Some of the forms of co-operation now pursued by the EU and some of its member states are expanding the grey areas where trade-offs begin. Joint patrols, re-admission agreements with non-EU countries, rescue at sea - these are areas where the EU must remain tough on fundamental rights and on its commitments to international law if it wants to be taken seriously as a normative power.

Qaddafi's reference to the future of Europe as a "black" continent also highlights the discrepancy between the attention that the EU pays to border control and the deficiencies of its policy on labour migration. The EU is an ageing society. By 2050, 33% of the European population will be over 65 years old, which means that there will be two retirees per active person. This makes labour migration vital. It needs to make itself more attractive as a destination: at present, the best and most qualified migrants on the other side of the Mediterranean though, prefer to emigrate to the United States, Canada, or the Gulf States. This does not lessen the need for control; control and mobility are not mutually exclusive. But it highlights the need for the EU to have a fuller, profound debate about the kind of common migration policy that it needs to design. The emphasis on control is distracting attention from that need.

Qaddafi's proposal is odd, but the EU and the member states should not dismiss it. They should take it seriously and the paradoxes in their existing migration policy that it reveals. Such a re-evaluation of migration policies is probably worth ?5bn. But that money should not go to Qaddafi.

Sarah Wolff is a research fellow at the Netherlands Institute for International Relations-Clingendael.