International

The European Union is delighted. Turkish president Recep Tayyip  Erdogan is delighted. There's an agreement on refugees. Hurray! In reality the refugees' interests don't exactly take centre stage. Erdogan will set up border patrols, as long asTurkey gets financial and political support from the EU. In this he has the EU in a stranglehold, and the EU member states hope to see fewer asylum seekers. How differently this could have been proceeding, had a UN conference with all of the involved countries in the region been organised, as the Dutch European Commissioner Frans Timmermans had in the recent past advised. Today's summit was not only a missed chance but came to an end with a ticking time bomb, of which the refugees and Turkish human rights are the victims.

Foto: Mohamed Azakir / World Bank

UN registration centre in Lebanon

If there is one subject which ran like a red line through yesterday's SP Congress, it was the refugee crisis. Without exception, every delegate who took the floor voiced concern over the refugees' lot. For the SP, in addition to decent reception camps in the region itself, what's important is that all refugees who make it to Europe are protected in a humane manner. As things stand, that is not the case anywhere, and you could see the panic in the eyes of the president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, when he announced that an end must be brought to freedom of movement through the Schengen countries if a solution were not quickly found. Evidently that weighs more heavily on him than the fate of the refugees themselves.

For the record, Turkey has never fully ratified the UN Refugees Convention. It recognises only refugees from Europe. The rest are tolerated, and in practice the UN Refugees Agency, the UNHCR, is allowed to take care of them. President Erdogan doesn't in any case take human rights all that seriously. Every day brings more victims, among whom are large numbers of journalists, human rights activists and members of the Kurdish minority.

It could be panic, but I think that more lurks behind the EU's sudden preparedness to do business with Erdogan. Commissioner Timmermans travelled first of all to Ankara to forge an accord, confirming the Commission's power. If he had taken the initiative for a UN conference, he would have had to recognise the UNHCR's leadership. The Commission does that as a rule only with great reluctance. In much the same way as they want to curtail the power of the member states, they have little respect for organisations which contain more countries than does the EU, whether it be the Council of Europe, the OECD or the UN. The Commission prefers to do things itself.

For the refugees this is disastrous. I have no confidence in facilities in the region as long as we're making agreements about them with Erdogan. Only an agreement where the UNHCR, as guardian of the Convention on Refugees, would prevail in the region would I find at all reputable. This organisation would, moreover, have ensured that the whole region was involved. Lebanon and Jordan are also receiving countries, but are now evidently not participating. And what should we think of the countries of the Arabian peninsula? Are we going to allow these countries to get away with showing no form whatsoever of solidarity towards the refugees, while all the time financial support is indeed being given to ISIS from within them?

It's to be hoped that the Council's panic and the Commission's hunger for power will quickly give way to a more balanced approach to the problem. Refugees deserve to be given protection and must therefore find comprehensive provision within the EU. For the affected region as a whole, a complete plan must be established under UN leadership. For me, this means that that UN conference can't come soon enough.