How Europe went from Merkel’s ‘We can do it’ ten years in the past to pulling up the drawbridge

The day they appeared he may hardly consider his eyes. Small boat after small boat bearing in from the Turkish facet. “I have so many memories that are coming back to me now,” says Paris Louamis, 50, a hotelier on the Greek island of Lesbos. “There were people from Syria, Afghanistan, many countries.”

This was August 2015 and Europe was witnessing the best motion in inhabitants for the reason that finish of the Second World War. More than 1,000,000 folks would arrive within the EU over the following few months pushed by violence in Syria, in addition to Afghanistan and Iraq and elsewhere.

I witnessed the arrivals on Lesbos and met Paris Laoumis as he was busy serving to exhausted asylum seekers close to his resort. “I am proud of what we did back then,” he tells me. Along with worldwide volunteers he supplied meals and clothes to these arriving.

Today the seaside is quiet. There aren’t any asylum seekers. But Paris is fearful. He believes one other disaster is feasible. With the variety of arrivals rising over the summer season months, his nation’s migration minister has warned of the chance of an “invasion”, with 1000’s arriving from international locations akin to Sudan, Egypt, Bangladesh and Yemen.

“Of course I worry. I can see the suffering of the people. They are not coming here but we see it on Crete (Greece’s largest island) where people have come. So it is possible that with the wars more people will come here.”

In 2015 I adopted because the asylum seekers boarded ferries, trudged within the warmth alongside railway strains, by way of cornfields, down nation lanes and alongside highways, making their means up by way of the Balkans and onwards to Germany and Scandinavia.

The numbers coming into Germany jumped from 76,000 in July to 170,000 the next month. On the final day of August the Chancellor Angela Merkel declared ‘wir schaffen das’ – we will do it – interpreted by many as extending open arms to the asylum seekers.

“Germany is a strong country,” she stated. “The motive with which we approach these things must be: we have achieved so much – we can do it! We can do it, and where something stands in our way, it has to be overcome, it has to be worked on.”

But the excessive feelings of that summer season, when crowds welcomed asylum seekers alongside the roads north, appear to belong to a really totally different time.

That optimistic proclamation quickly turned a political legal responsibility for Mrs Merkel. Political opponents and a few European leaders felt the phrases acted as a magnet for asylum seekers to the EU. Within a fortnight the Chancellor was compelled to impose controls on Germany’s borders as a result of inflow of asylum seekers.

And a decade on, issues over migration have develop into a serious political problem in lots of European international locations. The causes are advanced and fluctuate from nation to nation, however issues round safety, struggling economies and disillusionment with governing events have all had a serious position in shaping attitudes in the direction of those that arrive who’re fleeing warfare, starvation and financial desperation.

It has fuelled the rise of far proper events and seen centre and even left wing events scramble to impose controls on migration, fearing electoral defeat by populist right-wingers. Data from the Atlas Institute of International Affairs reveals how help for a lot proper events in Europe almost doubled over the time period of two electoral cycles to 27.6%.

Since 2015, when the UNHCR says over 1,000,000 folks entered Europe on asylum routes, there was a dramatic drop in arrivals. But since 2016, the common variety of folks coming into Europe has nonetheless been round 200,000 folks a yr. So far this yr a complete of 96,200 asylum seekers have been recorded arriving. So can powerful new controls actually additional convey down the numbers making an attempt to return to Europe? Or does world battle and financial desperation make their persevering with stream inevitable, with ebbs and flows within the numbers?

In Hungary, the far proper authorities of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, has taken one of many hardest approaches to migration. Back in September 2015, I used to be current when Hungary’s first fence was erected alongside the border with Serbia, and witnessed lots of of individuals scrambling to cross into the EU earlier than they might be shut out.

In Budapest, this week I met the nation’s minister for the EU, János Bóka, who stated Hungary’s strategy has been vindicated by the restrictive measures now being put ahead within the UK – the place the federal government plan to make it more durable for refugees to convey members of the family to the UK – in addition to international locations like Ireland, Denmark and Sweden.

“We feel vindicated not only because of what’s going on in other countries in Europe. This is of course also a sign that we took the right path 10 years ago, that now we see most of the countries are doing what we have been doing for the past 10 years.”

Hungary instantly returns individuals who arrive on the border with out permission to enter. They can solely apply for asylum within the Serbian capital Belgrade, or in Kyiv in warfare battered Ukraine.

Human rights lawyer Timea Kovács says this successfully makes it inconceivable to enter the EU through Hungary. “Basically there is no legal way to enter the Hungarian territory as a refugee,” she asserts.

As a end result Hungary is being fined a million Euros per day for breaching its obligations to asylum seekers beneath EU regulation. EU minister Bóka says the nation just isn’t about to alter its coverage. “If it is the price that we pay for the protection of our borders and maintaining peace and stability in Hungary, this is a price worth paying.”

But even such restrictive measures have not managed to completely halt the entry of asylum seekers.

Austrian police informed the BBC that there have been between 20 to 50 folks detected every single day making an attempt to enter their nation illegally from Hungary. This is simply the determine for these detected.

On a visit to the border with Serbia I heard the frustration of 1 group of Hungarian guards. We left the tar highway and adopted a patrol onto a dust monitor into the forest. The timber closed over forming a pure tunnel. Bright daylight gave method to shadows. The males within the automobile forward of us carried shotguns.

Dressed in navy camouflage Sándor Nagy and Eric Molner are citizen volunteers, paid by the state to patrol the Hungarian facet of the border with Serbia.

“I feel sad and angry, and most of all, worried about what is coming,” says Sandor. He believes Europe is failing to cease folks from coming throughout its borders. “To be honest, what we experience here is basically just one big circus. What we see is that border defence here is mostly a show, a political performance.”

We emerge right into a clearing the place a 12ft excessive border fence seems, topped with barbed wire, outfitted with sensors and cameras to detect unlawful crossings.

“They simply cut through it, and groups rush in at several points at once—this has been the same for years.” The drawback, he argues, is with organised crime, which is continually one step forward of the authorities. “This fence does not stop anyone in the long run … It delays the flow, but cannot stop it.”

With the expansion of felony trafficking has come a deluge of human rights abuses, in keeping with the United Nations. People traffickers dump folks within the Sahara desert; others crowd them onto unsafe boats. Some of those that get by way of discover themselves being compelled again into the desert by native safety forces.

More than 32,000 folks have died making an attempt to succeed in Europe previously 10 years – together with 1,300 lifeless or lacking this yr.

According to the UN’s International Organisation of Migration “much of this is happening in a situation of near complete impunity”.

The summer season of 2015 was not solely a summer season of welcome. It prompted speedy modifications within the approaches of a number of European states. Not simply with the erection of the fence in Hungary however, amongst a number of examples, the deployment of riot police in Croatia, and migrants being detained in Slovenia.

By March 2016 – six months after Mrs Merkel’s assertion – the EU had reached settlement with Turkey to maintain migrants from crossing into Greece and Bulgaria.

Since then the EU has accomplished offers with international locations together with Morocco, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt to stop their international locations getting used as launch factors to Europe.

Now, there are quite a few properly documented circumstances of asylum seekers being pushed again throughout EU borders by police and coast guards. Last January the European Court of Human Rights discovered Greece responsible of unlawful and “systematic” pushbacks of asylum seekers to Turkey.

Gerasimos Tsourapa, a professor of worldwide relations on the University of Birmingham, describes the coverage of outsourcing the asylum problem as a dramatic change for Europe. “The idea that migration can be leveraged for money or aid or other concessions, which was fairly exceptional for Europe in 2016, has now become a pattern.

“Migration diplomacy is contagious. Once the deal is struck then the logic spreads.”

There is also a paradox here, he says. “We are limiting asylum, we’re holding borders closed, however we additionally want to search out labour migrants to fill shortages and assist our nationwide financial system.”

Persistent public concern has seen a rise in support for far right parties across the EU, even in places like Sweden, which historically prided itself as a welcoming nation for those fleeing persecution. The far right Sweden Democrats won 20.5 percent of the vote in the 2022 general election – making them the country’s second largest party. In return for supporting a minority coalition government they have seen much of their anti-migration platform shape government policy.

Family re-unification for migrants has been made more difficult, as have conditions for permanent residency, and asylum quotas have been substantially reduced.

For the final leg of my journey I went to the western Swedish city of Karlstad, a picture postcard place on the banks of the River Klarälven, the longest waterway in Scandinavia.

Syrian refugee, Abdulmenem Alsatouf, 44, remembered the welcome he received here in 2015.

That has changed, he says. “At the start folks handled us very properly. But after just a few years — and after the federal government modified — issues shifted. They turned extra racist.” He cites incidents of racist abuse, including one neighbour leaving a toy pig outside this devoutly Muslim family’s home.

I first met Abdulmenem and his family ten years ago as they were trying to reach Europe from Turkey. I remember their hope for a new life. Now his wife Nour says she would prefer to be in Syria. “They have a look at us as if we solely got here right here to take their cash or reside off their help. But that is not true. When I first arrived, I studied Swedish for 2 years, I discovered the language, I completed faculty. Then I went to work — cleansing, kitchens, childcare. I pay taxes right here, identical to anybody else. I’m a part of this society.”

Why has Swedish public opinion shifted to the right on migration? One of the more frequently cited reasons in local media and by politicians is crime, specifically the rise of organised crime, with young perpetrators used to commit extreme violence. Since 2013 the rate of gun crime in the country has more than doubled.

People born abroad, and their children born in Sweden, are over-represented in crime statistics. But Sweden’s foreign ministry warns against a simplistic analysis of figures. It says low levels of education, unemployment, social segregation and refugee’s war trauma are all causes – not the fact of being a migrant.

Outside the local cultural museum, where he and his apprentice were busy painting the walls, I met Daniel Hessarp, 46, who is among the 60% of Swedes that opinion polls record as being concerned about crime. “We see the statistics of the crimes, who does it and such. So, there you will have the reply. We did not have this earlier than in Sweden.

The apprentice, Theo Bergsten, 20, stated he wasn’t against immigration as a result of “you learn from, they learn from you…so it’s really nice also.” But he stated the expansion in crime was a “sad part” of the story.

Maria Moberg, a sociology lecturer on the University of Karlstad, says social media has allowed the far proper’s message to thrive and discover new help amongst those that really feel excluded from society.

“Sweden Democrats are very open with [us] – they don’t want any asylum seekers. They actually want people to leave Sweden. And the whole government is sort of setting the agenda for being a hostile country. It’s more acceptable now to not be welcoming.”

Back on Lesbos, I went to go to a spot I’ve come to know over a few years of reporting migration points there. About half-hour drive from the Mytilene airport, in the midst of some olive groves, are the graves of asylum seekers who’ve died making an attempt to succeed in right here, or within the refugee camps arrange after 2015. Numerous graves are merely marked ‘Unknown’, the final resting place of those that believed Europe would provide them a greater life.

When I visited there have been three contemporary graves, and a fourth open ready for a burial to happen. It is a sobering reminder that determined folks will hold making an attempt to succeed in Europe, regardless of the big dangers.

So far this yr the numbers of asylum seekers detected making an attempt to succeed in Europe is down by 20 p.c. The numbers might surge and fall, however the world crises that drive migration are usually not going to vanish. That is the basic problem for politicians, no matter social gathering is in energy.

Additional reporting by Bruno Boelpaep, Nick Thorpe, Daphne Tolis and David McIlveen

Top picture credit score: Beata Zawrzel/NurPhoto through Getty Images

BBC InDepth is the house on the web site and app for one of the best evaluation, with contemporary views that problem assumptions and deep reporting on the largest problems with the day. And we showcase thought-provoking content material from throughout BBC Sounds and iPlayer too. You can ship us your suggestions on the InDepth part by clicking on the button beneath.