 We're very happy to have with us today Gerald Knaus, who is the founding chairman of the European Stability Initiative, and has been having a central part in the EU-Turkey arrangements for tackling the refugee crisis in the Aegean. It is of course a problem that still fosters in the European Union. I think you need only look at the results of the Italian elections on Sunday, or the results of the German elections last year, to realize that the impact of the refugee question in the European Union is quite striking. The elections initially, of course, and the elections in Germany took place after the agreement between the EU and Turkey, which considerably, what shall I say, modulated the problem as far as the EU is concerned in terms of sheer numbers coming from Syria. But there is also the question of refugees from North Africa, which I think affected the outcome of the Italian election. So in other words, the problem is very topical, and we look forward very much to hearing what you have to say on the EU-Turkey deal two years on humanity realism and the asylum debase in the EU. So thanks a lot. Thank you for this opportunity to present some thoughts. I would like to not talk too much about what happened two years ago, but of course I'm very open to any questions. If that interests you, what I would like to do is to take us straight to today. And to the question of what has been learned in the last two or three years, but even more importantly, what is the importance of what we've learned for the challenges that the EU faces at this moment, as you have rightly underlined. The issue of migration, borders, asylum, refugees has been now for many years at the center of European politics and has had the potential in the hands of gifted demagogues and various political forces to wreak havoc to traditional parties and to fundamentally change European debates. So what I would like to talk about is the EU and the Mediterranean today, two years after March 2016 when the EU-Turkey statement was reached and to ask the basic question of what is the EU, what are member states to do now, what is the right thing to do? Well, let me start with a question of why discussing issues of refugees and migration is so difficult. Difficult not just politically, but also morally at a very personal level. Let me start with the story of this young woman, Taiba Abasi, in Norway. She's recently been discussed a lot in Norway. Amnesty International has tried to make her internationally known. She is an Afghan, grew up in Iran with her parents, has moved to Norway in 2012, received protection and then in 2014 that was revoked. She's been in Norway since then, she's going to school and now there's a debate whether she should be deported with her family. The Norwegians say this is legal, the Norwegian Minister of Immigration has said recently this is nothing to do with what kind of a person you are or whether we are evil people, we as politicians need to obey the law and the law says that this family has no need for protection, our procedures, our systems have found that. We can't undermine the asylum system, so for this reason this young woman has to go back to Afghanistan. Six years after coming to Norway, if she would actually go this year Norway has taken in 2016 760 people back to Afghanistan. Now is this morally right? Is this politically wise? Is this the right thing to do? We know it's not a question of legality, it is legal, but is it what European states should do? Now let me see if I can... This is a second image from autumn 2015 and here what you see is very different, it's not one face, it's thousands or hundreds of people on one picture, it's really a day in autumn when 10,000 people crossed into Slovenia, that's where this picture was taken in the Balkans, in a year when 860,000 people arrived in Greece in a few months. So suddenly of course we know again every one of these people has an individual biography, many of them were Syrians, there was the largest group, there were Afghans, there were Iraqis, there were Pakistanis from all over Central Asia and of course the question then was if you see them as a group how long is it possible for Central European or Northern European countries to accept 10,000 people arriving every day, which is of course what happened in October, November, December 2016. Now here you have this man, Viktor Orban, who at that time developed a vision and his vision was for different kind of European politics, he was the most lucid and eloquent of the populists because what he saw and he made a speech in September 2015, early in the month where he said to his party members that this is a great opportunity, you remember the scenes at Budapest train station when Orban and his government prevented people getting on to trains, so there were mass scenes of people in the center of Budapest, no support was provided, not even toilets and then people started walking towards Germany, then Orban and his people sent them buses, they put them on buses and drove them to the Austrian border but he later said that the only reason people went to Germany and Austria or had even come to Hungary was because of the good-hearted and naive and hypocritical Germans, if they wouldn't have sent, the signal people wouldn't have come and so they shouldn't have come because as he put it in a speech a year later, mass migration is really about occupation of territory, their gain in territory is our loss, so he's using military language, he doesn't see refugees, he sees an invading army and so his recipe is to try to win political supporters all around Europe in favor of basically giving up on the refugee convention. Now two years ago he was isolated, today I suspect a large number, if not a majority of EU member states think very similar to him and this is, you have to forgive me, I'll improvise, and this is of course what has happened in the last two years, you've had Orban and Kaczynski who won elections in Poland, an absolute majority in autumn 2015 against the background of the refugee crisis with an extremely racist campaign, how Muslim refugees were bringing illness and disease and crime and terrorism to Poland, Orban and Kaczynski on this cover of a Polish magazine, Oni, Brania, Europe, they defend Europe, you have the AfD in Germany which as some of you know has entered the Bundestag last autumn is now in the polls, the second party in Germany, an extreme far-right party and you have Le Pen who won more than 30 percent of the votes and went into the run-off of the French presidential election, you have the Lega as the big winner among the center, well I don't know if you can say it, call it center-right, the far-right-center-right coalition and of course you have the Austrian leader of the Freedom Party whose party has now half the government and all the key ministries to deal with security. So the chair of the EU Council of Ministers for Home Affairs when Austria takes the presidency in July will be a far-right minister of interior who made his name with Islamophobic statements for the last decade. And finally you have this image of Ilhan Kurdi also in September 2015, the little boy who drowned, whose picture moved people around the world, what people have forgotten I think is that that same month in September 160 people drowned in the Aegean and people kept drowning every month. So as late as January 2016, four months after Ilhan's death, 275 people drowned in the Aegean in one month. Now the reason it's so hard to think about the issue and debate the issue of migration refugees in asylum is because all of these conflicting images are not only in our heads but in the heads of public opinion. We have compassion for the Afghan girl, why can't she just stay in Norway? There is fear among a lot of our public of thousands of people every day crossing borders and when will this end? There is again compassion for the people who die on their way to Europe and we find how can this be possible that the little boy with relatives in Canada has to risk his life and he and his brother drown. And then there is the political concern that if we don't have control over the situation the parties that will exploit it are going to redefine completely the basic rules of European politics not just doing away with the refugee convention but with liberalism altogether. So the question of morality and politics all these questions when it is right to deport people what the relationship can be between democracy and open borders and whether any democracy in recent history has ever accepted open borders and how we deal with the issue of deaths at sea and what needs to be done to prevent these. All of these questions are affecting people very directly. They are psychologically hard to deal with but also politically when we look at the instruments one might have or need in order to take back people who do not have a right to asylum in order to control borders in line with humanitarian values or in order to save lives the question is also does Europe have these instruments today or two years ago. So let me look at these four issues that are on the agenda in 2018 and connect them all back to the question at the story of Degian. What is happening in the Central Mediterranean today the big debate in the EU on Dublin reform the way politics has exploited the lack of a policy on the European level and finally Greece, Turkey and Degian the question what have we learned what do we need to learn and what should happen next. The Central Mediterranean has of course been in the last year much more in the centre of attention because people have largely stopped coming in large numbers across Degian they have continued to come across the Central Mediterranean. Here you look at number of arrivals of both people just people getting into boats essentially in Libya, North Africa 2008, 2009, 2010 you have a whole year less than 4,500 people arriving in Italy that was the year in which Bellosconi had a deal with Gaddafi so at that time Italy stopped boats and took them back to Libya later found by the European Court of Human Rights to be a violation of its legal obligations then Gaddafi fell 2011 and then from 2014 on every year more than 100,000 people arriving so in four years you have half a million people come to Italy now it wasn't just that people came people died in unprecedented numbers from 1988 to 2013 these are the IOM numbers you had 14,000 people dying trying to cross the Mediterranean I mean this is a shocking number this makes the Mediterranean one of the worst most bloody borders in the world but this was in 25 years in 2014, 2017, in four years you had 15,300 people die in the Mediterranean these are numbers like in war in fact this is exactly the same number as people estimated to have died in the war in Ukraine at the same time it is, well, four times the number of people who died in the troubles in Northern Ireland in decades so these numbers are really a humanitarian disaster and of these 15,000 the vast majority died on the way to Italy in four years now in 2017, Italian government was looking for a strategy what should they do and they tell interior minister, a former communist and the social democratic or centre left democratic party Marco Minetti had a strategy his strategy was to try to make agreements with Libyan militias with the Libyan coast guard with what he called tribal leaders in the south of the country to stop people leaving Libya reaching the coast and here is what has happened it is working well, Italian arrivals, if you look at you won't see the whole thing this is the most important the numbers of arrivals in the second half of last year have indeed fallen dramatically so have depths at sea these are the numbers of people who died always the first and second half of these years this has been the least deadly year and this is of course what Italians would say the policies saved lives if you compare the first and the second half of the year but they've done so at the price of tremendous moral questions because the people that the Libyan coast guard is taking back from when it stops them at sea or on the coast end up in detention centres like this where we have a lot of evidence that people are being tortured abused, basically exploited to then raise money from family to escape from hell so is this a solution for Italy and what will happen next it's an open question to which in the election campaign there wasn't much debate because nobody of the big parties questioned Mr Miniti's policy there was a consensus on this so if you are a human rights group or if you are a citizen of Italy who is concerned about the treatment of refugees in Libya what are you going to propose secondly EU policy another completely unresolved set of questions the future of Dublin in Brussels people of course as you know don't agree at all what should happen with the Dublin system that allocates responsibility for asylum seekers in the EU according to a pretty simplistic logic which essentially says when people enter your country you have a responsibility for it therefore you are responsible for most of the people wherever they enter which essentially would mean that Italy, Spain, Greece, Bulgaria should be the countries where most people in recent years or in the last 20 years have applied for asylum we know that wasn't the case the country with most asylum applications was Sweden which is pretty far away from the EU's external borders and that alone shows you that Dublin never worked here we see it I mean these are the core countries where people have entered in recent years Italy, Hungary, Spain, Bulgaria and Greece what we see also is that basically nobody's ever returned what we would also see is that very few people applied for asylum there until five years ago so people arrived in Italy yes but then they immediately left and Italy never took anybody back I mean last in 2014 Italy took back 2,000 people we'll get to the numbers for last year Greece, Dublin, complete failure I mean the idea that you know Germany then registered somebody says ah you've entered through Greece we'll send you back never worked same with Bulgaria, same with Hungary here the request for Dublin request to take people back 64,000 in 2016 actual transfers in the whole year from the whole of the EU 4,000 so that means if you arrive in Italy and you leave you reach any other place you stay there whether you get protection or not and Dublin is in another way totally perverse because it creates an incentive for countries to treat refugees badly if you treat them badly like Hungary does then the German courts will not allow you to move people back to Hungary so you actually have a race to the bottom if you don't give refugees much help like in Bulgaria even if they're recognized people will move on to Germany if you scare refugees with new stories about taking their money like Denmark or Austria has now talked about what you achieve is that they move on to Germany Dublin and Greece just this last number it shows you transfers actual incoming requests but very few people even try to send anyone back to Greece these are the numbers that the Greeks accepted these are the numbers actually transferred we have no system in the EU at the moment we have a common Schengen space Dublin doesn't work now the Swiss paradox that's the one I looked recently end of last year went to Switzerland because people told me that Switzerland is happy with Dublin which is curious because Switzerland is not a member of the EU it joined Dublin but it didn't design the rules so why are they so happy well because of course nobody reaches Switzerland directly so people come through Italy the Swiss then have a relatively quick asylum system they make a request to the Italians and say this is a Dublin case do you take them back the Italians might say yes when the Italians say yes and I went to a removal center outside of Zurich in December I asked the people there what happens they said well if people find out that they are about to be sent back to Italy the next day they move north 70 kilometers near Germany then the Germans need to ask the Italians to take them back and they never do so for Switzerland it works but as a system it doesn't work for anybody here you have Italian asylum applications look at 2010 12,000 this is really curious but this has changed dramatically 2017 more than 10 times as many asylum applications in Italy 130,000 now easily made 80,000 decisions last year you can imagine an asylum service that suddenly has 10 times as many applications there are case workers in Italy and I met the head of the Italian asylum service last week in Rome to confirm this that literally do 4 interviews and take 4 draft 4 decisions in half a day how seriously you can investigate individual cases I leave to you to reflect on Greece asylum applications in the last 5 years went from less than 5,000 to more than 50,000 last year now what is the reform of Dublin that is on the table the idea is that people would be moved around Europe that there would be quotas as they are in Germany now as we know recently Donald Tusk said that the EU migrant quotas have no future the compulsory quotas don't work I don't want to get into the debate on the ideology because the much bigger question is even if this Dublin reform would be adopted I'm sure it would fail and the reason is simple how do you move large numbers of people against their will around Europe especially if countries have found wonderful ways already in the existing Dublin system to basically slow things down if you go and talk to people in a German federal land they are trying to send people back to Italy they will tell you that they tell you and say yeah yeah we take people but they can only arrive on 2 days because otherwise we have no personnel please only to Milano only direct flights and only a few per flight suddenly you figure out you can send 10 people a month I made this up but this is exactly what I was told basically the reasons of your people are sent is because member states can always find a reason to stop it why would it work now with compulsory quotas people would always find reasons and the other problem for Italy is with compulsory quotas they would still need to assess the admissibility of each case they would still need to register people keep them in Italy until the countries to which they are allocated are supposed to take them now in Germany, voluntary relocation works like this you arrive in Munich you are told that actually the various have taken too many people you should go to Hessen but then you get a train ticket now imagine this in Greece you arrive in Greece you are told that no, you have to go to Poland they haven't taken enough asylum seekers here is your plane ticket please fly to Poland and go and apply for asylum and this for tens of thousands of people when I asked people in the European Parliament and in the Commission have you figured out how this would work practically with everything we've learned in 20 years of the failure of Dublin they have no answers they understand the Hungarians that they will be swamped by people the Germans that this will be a fair system both sides know it will never work and it also will create further race to the bottom on reception less attractive you are the more you can be certain people won't come and there is nothing in the reform that really will ensure that reception standards stay the same so the question for Germany the challenge is can Germany lower its standards to the extent that people will not all want to go to Germany because civil society doesn't want it the political elite gladly is not in favour of it the courts would not allow it so even in this new system you would still have the problem that people would arrive in Germany and then what do you do refugee politics well we know what might then happen the threat because we've seen it in Austria in October 2015 Vienna was as much in favour of taking refugees as the whole of Germany Austria took as many people as Germany did until March 2016 today this is the Interior Minister Mr. Kickel who will chair the EU Council of Justice of Home Affairs that will discuss Dublin reform he is from the far right party his slogan is an upper limit for migration of zero actually below zero now this is the campaign they've been running recently against this woman who was the Minister of Austria who closed the Balkan route this is not a person in favour of open borders yet she was attacked by the other party that is now in government and to which the Interior Minister belongs in elections a few weeks ago as being too friendly to Muslims their whole campaign has been Islamophobic why because in the kindergarten of the state where she is now the governor people are learning songs from Arabic countries if they are Arabs in the kindergarten group Czech Republic I don't need to tell you in the elections they are recently on the whole campaign based off the man who won based on not having any single refugee and of course we will have elections in Hungary and despite some optimism among some Hungarian friends it's almost certain that Viktor will win again an absolute majority I've talked about Germany so where are we then Dublin doesn't work the reform that is now proposed will not be adopted or if it is adopted it will not work we have a politics in the last two years that has drastically changed the debate on asylum and borders we have no solution in the central Mediterranean except some very cynical dubious agreements with some forces in Libya that have temporarily lowered the numbers what are we supposed to do now let's look at Greece, Turkey and the Jeanne the situation there this winter has been as bad as last winter which in itself is extraordinary it's on a Greek holiday island arrivals of course have fallen dramatically since the Euturki statement this is just all of last year and what you see is that in six months total number of arrivals were as high as before in October in one day so clearly that has been a dramatic reduction and yet even these very low numbers have not improved conditions on the islands they've remained as bad one year ago in winter as they are now which makes you ask how that can be in the second half however numbers are increasing again, more than doubled and we've been warning for the last year that this year they will increase further and they are increasing because these conditions are actually not scaring people off which I suspect is some of the intention behind these bad conditions on the islands, well since the Euturki statement until end of 2017 total number was 56,000 which is the number that arrived just in February 2016, the month before the statement they are Syrians, Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis where are they now what did the Euturki agreement mean for them well often it's 56,000 end of last year 12,000 or 13,000 were on the island still 1,485 were returned to Turkey which is about, you can do the math 70 a month which is less than arrive in a day all the others have essentially been taken to the Greek mainland so the vast largest number of people are not as the media suggest or as your image from might make you believe trapped on the islands in closed camps the vast majority stays on the islands on average 3 to 4 months or less and then moves on to the Greek mainland now the reality is that nobody is being returned to Turkey or almost 70 a month is less than where returned to Turkey in the 3 months before the agreement now again you don't hear that much because a lot of the campaign against the statement by NGOs has been from the start that this would lead to a mass expulsion of people well that certainly hasn't happened the reality is that if you apply for asylum look at the Syrians who arrived in Greece on the islands these are the numbers of actually returned 216 Syrians but these are people who gave up if you apply for asylum and don't give up the chance of being returned to Turkey in the last 2 years has been close to zero now this is not the image that the EU and Greece want to project that is not what you hear from the critical NGO reports and assessments of the agreement and it is also clear that the moment people realize this the number of people getting into boats is increasing again the obvious problem on the islands why are conditions so bad well, the 12809 people end of last year in the winter where in places that at most, generously speaking could host 7000 people and that is actually not adequate either so conditions in current hotspots were never adequate for keeping people NGOs in recent months have said well, the solution is easy just open the islands everybody arrives, move them off the island immediately but what will happen then well, the Greeks tried it last September September 2017, they moved 4,000 people off the island the next month 5,000 came because of course as people realize that the time on the islands is shortening people arrive in large numbers again here is again the numbers in January 2016 and in February this was the arrival this was the arrival in the days before the new Turkey agreement so this is why the Greek authorities are not going to open the islands because they are afraid that they are going to go back to the situation they had before so we are in a curious situation people are kept on the islands under bad conditions but then nobody is returned to Turkey so essentially they are kept on the islands for a few months before being brought to the mainland anyways it's deterrence it's actually a cynical strategy that doesn't engage with the fundamental question of whether people could safely be returned to Turkey and what this would require also this, the number of deaths I've talked about it, a lot less people died since the EURT statement so if you factor this in as well how do you deal with this when you assess the morality of the agreement the Greek consensus is clear the opposition and the government are and will remain committed to the EURT statement because they have no other idea they don't know what else to do so you have Mr Tsipras in Paris on a visit it's difficult but necessary you have Mitsotakis leader of the opposition on the island of Kyos in a speech we are fully complied and you have the former minister of refugees saying emptying the island is not the solution there is no supporting Greece for abandoning the agreement but there isn't any effort to implement it either the Greek asylum service former hedge, he's been had since 2012 has said there is an obsession by some NGOs and Defenders of Human Rights to block the implementation of the agreement if I don't hear alternatives if the increased flows continue there's nothing we can do that's of course the other reality already now again with increased flows the Greek asylum service cannot cope already now when people arrive they are giving a date of an interview in more than a year and who knows when the decision will really be taken already now and this is before a large increase the case workers are overburdened now imagine that the number doubles the promise of an asylum procedure that is credible and fast disappears so what can go wrong in 2018 all of this together well a lot the crisis might continue we don't know what will happen in Libya we don't know what will happen in the G.N we have no Dublin reform and we have a Dublin system and we have European Parliament elections in 2019 with this background if you are a Social Democratic or a centre-right party or a Green Party or a Liberal Party what will you campaign on when the far right has simple answers close down the route suspend border, suspend Schengen put soldiers at the German or Italian or French border suspend the implementation of the agreement emulate Australia all the slogans of the populists parties do and say now having put that up I think I should offer some suggestions the key test I think one key test is in the Aegean we have been proposing since the last two years that we actually take the Turkey agreement seriously what does it require it requires fast and fair asylum procedures on the island nobody should be on the islands longer than two months now is this possible including appeal it is and I'll tell you in a second where it already exists in another EU member state we also need to have assurances when people are to be returned to Turkey and that is important to return people to Turkey who are safe in Turkey that they are then treated in accordance with the Turkish and international standards the Turkish law on foreigners and asylum is a good law the question is just is it going to be implemented now the European Court of Human Rights has given in many judgments standards are they being monitored in Turkey for those that we sent back to Turkey that's the second big question and the third one is we need your main reception services with enough places now here is our proposal develop a pilot project as the EU funded fully provide all the resources human and financial you need to export the Dutch asylum experience to the Greek islands in the Dutch asylum system this is what happens you have an eight day procedure which is more intense and more thorough for each asylum seeker than anything in any other European country you have legal support paid for each asylum seeker you have detailed justifications of 20-25 pages and two interviews but after these eight days the first instance procedure is finished and the appeal can happen quickly because you have a lot of very well argued evidence the courts decide within four weeks, within six weeks most cases are decided now the question is for how many people do you need, how many resources that is to be worked out if 3000-4000 people arrive in the Greek islands in a month figure out how much it will take for the Dutch system then get the case workers from Ireland from Sweden, from Germany, from France get the translators make sure that we can stay within these deadlines then nobody needs to be in the islands longer than two months if we combine this with realism on resources for example, forget the details this is something I've been telling the Greeks currently a hundred appeals decisions are taken on all the islands in a month, a hundred so if you are rejected then you appeal the number of possible returns to Turkey currently in a month from the islands is a hundred maximum if everybody is rejected that obviously doesn't work so you need at least ten new appeals panels these are panels of three judges you can create them if you want to as Greece and finally you take the European Court of Human Rights seriously it has given standards even for moving Afghans from Switzerland to Italy this is a court decision from Strasbourg which said that the Swiss asylum service in the absence of detailed and reliable information could not move an Afghan family to Italy well Turkey is member of the Council of Europe the same standards should apply but it also means these standards are verified we need to know for the people that the Greek authorities want to send back to Turkey where they will go what are the conditions and who is going to monitor this when the EU tried to resume Dublin transfers to Greece end of last year that's what it defined, it said transferring an applicant to Greece let's say from Ireland or Germany the applicant will be received in reception facility meeting standards in EU law and the application will be examined within these deadlines well, that's what we need to send somebody to Greece we should have the same standards applied to send somebody to Turkey that is what we need to discuss with the Turks we are talking about sending 2000 people a month at most and then the flow would stop can we not set this up and we are not talking about sending back anybody who is not safe in Turkey because we would actually have a serious 8 day procedure and an appeal to verify that there are no individual reasons again sending an activist, a Kurd somebody who has any reason not to be sent back to Turkey let us alone are not enough there need to be guarantees in the case of Greece EASO has been talking about setting up a structure to verify we've argued for an onboard person for the EU-Turkey statement to verify what happens so this is what we need in the GEN a promise to islanders that anybody who arrives will not stay longer than two weeks two months two months well you can calculate if 4000 people arrive a month and they stay two months you need 8000 decent places otherwise if you can't make a decision they move to the mainland after two months the EU should fund these reception centers they should be something that you can be proud of there is enough money hundreds of millions let's create EU reception identification centers that actually protect people currently in the hotspots on the Greek islands in the evening and I've been there if you are inside there is no protection, there is no police there is no security that is why we have this recent really bad report from UNHCR on harassment, on violence inside the camps well no wonder if you squeeze a few thousand people into a small narrow space and there is no protection towards Turkey continue to spend money on Syrians in Turkey which is part of the EU-Turkey statement it's in everybody's interest the refugees Turkey and the EU increase resettlement from Turkey as was promised in the EU-Turkey statement but also create an onboard person and make sure that Turkey does its part for those that we want to send back so the goal would be that instead of 60,000 people arriving in two years 10,000 people arrive via the sea and we take 70,000 people in an orderly process that don't pass through the islands and resettle them in the EU that was the idea of the agreement and if we can't implement it with those numbers we might as well give up on the idea of a European refugee and asylum policy Emmanuel Macron when he made his campaign talked a lot about these issues and he gave in his speech in Strasbourg at the Sorbonne, sorry, end of last year autumn last year, he talked about these three principles protect borders effectively taking those eligible for asylum and quickly return those not eligible it's a great simple vision but without instruments how we do it it will fail so here is the idea and this is again from Macron's speech procedures remain slow and disparate well let's learn from the best in the EU returns, we are incapable of organizing them no country in Europe can return large numbers of people, let's realize that those who are now here are going to stay because countries of origin will not take large numbers we are on a small number to stop future flows and don't leave the burden to the few we can't just rely on Greece and Italy to cope as they have in the last two or three years the Dublin debate should be about this and this is where I hope also the Irish government and other governments that have an interest can push we need to think how we can get Amsterdam to the Mediterranean quick, fair quality procedures funded by the EU all the support we can get from all the asylum services around Europe we need an EU special envoy who negotiates further agreements with African countries of origin to take back those who are then rejected after a quick procedure in Italy which is in fact the majority of people who have arrived in the last two years international protection in Italy was given to less than 10% of arrivals of West African countries which was half the arrivals but anybody stays Italy had 100,000 people arrive from West Africa in 2016 and 260 returned in the whole year so we are creating a magnet which then leads to people risking their life and lead to almost 14,000 people drowning we need humane reception this needs to be an EU responsibility we cannot create Nauru which is essentially the idea of Australia that by treating those who arrive badly you deter people from arriving which is what is now happening and we need to realise that the morality of returning people is that when people have spent years here it changes you cannot return people who have been living years here in the same way in which you can after a fair procedure return somebody after 6 weeks also it is pointless as an incentive for others not to come Germany in the last half year returned just over 100 Afghans who have been in the country for years this has no impact whatsoever on arrivals and finally offer more resettlement and again this is part of the EU Turkey Statement it is what we promised to Turkey in point 4 of the agreement once the flow is reduced to have a large scale voluntary resettlement what is at stake and I am concluding is the right to asylum if we let things drift as we have in the last 2 years more and more parties are going to arrive in power that are going to go beyond minity and we will see what the policy of the new Italian government will be we need to treat asylum seekers humanely there is no point having great principles when people are kept in camps that are overcrowded with no protection we need to reduce drownings it is a scandal if the numbers of people who drown and we are incapable of allegedly saving them reaches war time casualty figures we need to save Schengen we cannot save Schengen if we have a system where everybody arrives in Italy stays and is never returned and then the only solution politically in France is let's put more soldiers in Ventimiglia inside Schengen to protect people moving which is the end of Schengen and we need to protect the future of European values which have to combine empathy and control we need a credible response to an illiberal agenda because one is behind the abuse and use of the migration and border issue by the far right in Europe is an attack on liberalism itself we need to reduce deaths at sea and when it comes to people who have actually been here for years and who have grown up in our countries we need to recognize that while it may be illegal to return them it is neither moral nor politically in any way justified we need a moral realism of return that can let people like Abbasi stay and the moral realism must be that once borders are under control most of the people who arrived in Sweden or Germany Italy or France in recent years we will have to regularize because we are never going to be able to return such large numbers last year Italy returned a total number of 5000 people to all the countries in the world and it is essentially just 4 countries where returns work Algeria, Morocco Egypt and Albania here are all the numbers the sources I am gladly sending you the presentation if you are interested in more and I look forward to the debate thank you