Philip Bowring: Europe's challenge
 
Philip Bowring IHT
Monday, March 17, 2003
GENEVA The long-run importance of a war with Iraq may lie in its impact on the biggest challenge facing Europe: migration and demographics. Will war widen the rift between Europe and its past and prospective main sources of migrants? Will it further delay rational consideration of the interrelated issues of asylum and migration and adoption of a common EU policy? Or will it force Europe to start to seriously consider new policies?
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On current trends population will fall by over 15 percent by 2050 and by 50 percent in 100 years. Only Albania now has a fertility rate sufficient to sustain its population naturally. The aging as well as shrinking population will inevitably create huge demand for migrant labor.
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The issue Europe must face is how that should be controlled or channeled. War inevitably will increase tensions between existing Muslim communities and those among whom they are settled. Will that mean more draconian measures against illegal migration, or recognition that migration will happen anyway due to the demographic imbalance across the Mediterranean? In any event, it is critical to relations with Muslim neighbors who should be the main providers of new blood and muscle.
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Explicit discussion of these issues would help Europe explain its reluctance to join an American expedition to Iraq. But even before Iraq moved to center stage, search for a viable policy was paralyzed by two factors - the post-Sept. 11 security concerns focused on Muslim communities, and the asylum seekers, many of them Muslims, whose exploitation has determined elections from Austria to Australia.
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The asylum system, designed to protect the persecuted, has been abused by tens of thousands of economic migrants. But however harsh the measures now employed to prevent abuse, there is no escape from the fact of demand for labor in Europe, and of a supply of adventurous young people from outside willing to take chances to better themselves. Europe can no more stop the flow from the south than can the United States.
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But it has yet to face that fact, or face its coming demographic need for migrants, whether permanent settlers or contract workers. The longer post-Sept. 11 developments impact its relations with the Muslim world the more important a policy becomes – and the more difficult.
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Iraq has shown two fissures. A secular Europe which wants to at least partially integrate its migrants needs to be wary not to stir up religious emotion.
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Second, there is a split between the EU candidates and most of the rest. This partly derives from their relative lack of non-European migrants. Their demographic needs are even greater but if they open up to migration, they may look for Slavs from further east.
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Formal policies on migration similar to those of traditional migrant-importing countries would help Europe deal with the asylum-seeker issue, and provide a basis for pro-active policies to integrate newcomers. But Europe has yet to acknowledge its needs, let alone face the issue of determining immigration qualifications.
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War may awaken Europe to its demographic peril, or push its head deeper into the sand.

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