Charlemagne: Adrift about boat people THE flotsam of a wrecked world washes up regularly on the shores of southern Europe. Afghans and Syrians land on the Aegean islands. Somalis and Eritreans fetch up in Italy. They come in dinghies and rickety boats, and often perish at sea. This month saw one of the most wretched incidents yet: the deaths of more than 300 people drowned when an overladen fishing boat capsized off the Italian island of Lampedusa. A week after the tragedy divers were still pulling bodies out of the hull almost 50 metres below the surface. They spoke of having to prise the dead from a mass of agglutinated humans. "We cannot accept that thousands of people die on Europe's borders," declared José Manuel Barroso, president of the European Commission, who visited Lampedusa to show solidarity. Pope Francis put it more bluntly: "It is shameful." At such moments the confusion of Europe's migration and asylum policies becomes evident. The Italian government called a day of mourning, gave honorary citizenship to the dead and promised a state funeral. At the same time prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into the survivors under laws that subject clandestine immigrants to fines of €5,000 ($6,800). European interior ministers meeting in Luxembourg this week were hardly more coherent. They expressed their horror, but only set up a task-force to study the problem. At best, there will be some improvements in the border-security co-ordination system known as Frontex, which supplies guards, surveillance aircraft and patrol ships to augment national forces. The commission wants a Mediterranean-wide search-and-rescue system to respond more quickly to boats in distress. Yet the budget for Frontex is meagre, less than €100m a year, compared with the €60 billion the EU spends annually subsidising farmers. Even if more resources are found, the humanitarian impulse to save lives clashes with the political need to curb illegal migration. The fear is that making sea crossing safer may just lure more people. Moreover, the boats invariably carry mixed human cargoes of refugees fleeing wars and persecution, and migrants escaping economic misery. Even if it could be done safely, the boats cannot be pushed back. Passengers must be brought ashore and processed. Those seeking asylum must have their cases heard and adjudicated. Economic migrants are meant to be sent home, though that is often impossible. The human tide ebbs and flows according to the season, distant conflicts, political alignments in north Africa, the deployment of Europe's defences and the guile of people-smugglers. Over the years the flows have moved in a circle around the Mediterranean, at first heading to Spain, then to Italy and finally to Greece. As Frontex helped Greece to tighten security on the land crossing with Turkey, the order is now reversing, with increased flows to the Greek islands and Italy. Lying close to Tunisia and Libya, Lampedusa is a tantalising gateway to Europe. The Arab spring in 2011 broke the locks. Thousands of Tunisians crossed to Italy after the fall of their government, followed by migrant workers leaving the chaos in Libya. In 2011 some 64,000 boat people landed in Italy. The numbers fell to a quarter of that in 2012, but have risen to 31,000 so far this year. One surprise is the arrival of boats from as far away as Syria. The United Nations refugee agency reckons the sea crossings to Italy are increasing because the overland route from the Horn of Africa through Sinai into Israel has been cut off. Another reason is the political chaos in Libya since France and Britain led the way in toppling the regime of Muammar Qaddafi. Italy has a new arrangement with Tunisia to control boat people and take citizens back, but none with Libya. For Enrico Letta, Italy's prime minister, the boat people constitute a "European drama" requiring prompt European action. There is something odd about such alarm: Italy is not tiny Malta, but one of the big four members of the EU, and in living memory it exported its own people. Surely Italy has some duty to its former colonies, Somalia and Eritrea, where most of the boat people now come from, and to Libya, through which they pass. Those braving the Mediterranean may be the most heart-wrenching of illegal immigrants. But the biggest numbers are made up of those entering the EU legally, usually by plane, who overstay their visas. Last year, Germany, France, Sweden, Britain and Belgium received more requests for asylum than Italy. As a share of the population, Scandinavia, Switzerland and Ireland bear a greater refugee burden than Italy. And don't forget that four-fifths of the world's refugees live in poor countries. Let more in Yet Mr Letta is right in one respect. The EU is better placed than individual member countries to try to manage global migration, if it could bring itself to open legal ways to do it in the face of rising anti-immigrant parties. It has negotiated a "mobility partnership" with Morocco, which is committed to controlling its shores in return for assistance and greater openings for legal travel to work in Europe. The EU could process refugees closer to their countries of origin to spare them perilous journeys at the hands of people-smugglers. And it should demand greater burden-sharing among rich countries. Last year Malta admitted more refugees than Japan. The EU, moreover, can provide economic assistance to spur development in poorer countries. Yet it makes little use of its greatest asset. It is still reluctant to open its huge internal market to its neighbours" agricultural goods for fear of unwelcome competition for southern Europe's farmers. If countries like Italy refuse to take more tomatoes from north Africa, they may simply be condemned to take more people.