Asylum and Immigration in Europe

The civil war in Syria, which has driven a large number of that country’s population to emigrate, and the multiple crises flaring up all over Africa and the Middle East have further fuelled the debates on European migration policies and on attitudes toward that influx of migrants both across the union and in the different member states. For Europeans, this means finding responses by which they can reconcile their historic humanitarian values with the inherent limitations on their ability to cope with taking in and integrating these groups of people. In this article, Jean-François Drevet shows what a difficult exercise this is, not only for the Union (for example, in its relations with Turkey), but also with regard to public opinion in the various countries (less and less favourable to receiving migrants) and at the political level (particularly where the integration of Muslim communities is concerned). This column, which was written before the Paris attacks and before the ensuing debates on how to deal with “radicalized” people of foreign origin, remains wholly pertinent on these migration issues and its author cannot be accused of writing under the influence of those tragic events.