The link between African illegal migration to Europe and EPAs

by Chido Makunike, Trade Africa, November 12, 2007

Over the past few years the world has heard horrific stories and seen wrenching images of desperate people who have departed from the shores of West Africa in flimsy boats to try to get to Europe, seeking what they hope will be an easier, better life. There are many tales of mass deaths on the crowded boats, with the “lucky” often reaching the Canary Islands or being rescued at sea emaciated from hunger and dehydration.

Reports suggest that the number making the perilous journey has declined this year, following the agreement of European and West African countries to more aggressively patrol the West African coastline. This has been accompanied by several other measures to clamp down on illegal migration in general, particularly the perilous sea-faring kind.

Those efforts include high-profile media campaigns in several countries to discourage would-be migrants by warning them of the perils of the journey, and that life in Europe for them is unlikely to be as they imagine. In the last few days, there was also an announcement of a plan to grant 2700 young Senegalese visas to work in agricultural and fishing jobs in Spain.

Yet such are the pressures fuelling the phenomenon, and the misconceptions of what life in Europe is going to be like, that it seems doubtful that these efforts will significantly reduce the desire to make the journey, even if they succeed in stemming the human tide in the short term.

The current methods of attempted physical interception or prevention of this type of immigration only address a part of the cause and effects of the phenomenon. We are likely to see a resort to bolder, more imaginative and even more desperate means of making the journey, even if the result is more pain, tragedy and loss. This is a phenomenon that is likely to test the coping strategies of governments in Europe and Africa for a long time to come.

Whether one is in Africa or Europe, illegal migration is a human interest story, especially when it is as dramatic and desperate as scores of men, women and children setting out onto the sea in thin, open wooden boats, and particularly when it ends in tragedy. The tales are horrific but also gripping, the pictures and videos heart-wrenching but at the same time fascinating. Whatever one’s feelings about the “rightness” or “wrongness” of the practice, it is a reminder of how the last few centuries’ history has inextricably tied Europe and Africa together, for better as well as for worse.

Not quite as dramatic or interesting, but with far more potential to substantially affect the Europe-Africa relationship, are the Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) that are being negotiated.

Trade issues generally do not elicit much public interest anywhere in the world, especially when they involve the complexities of the EPAs. So while there is a raging debate about the pros and cons of the EPAs in certain elite circles in Africa and Europe, the general public has little or no awareness of the issues. This is a great pity, because the EPAs are likely to usher in significant changes in economic relations between Europe and Africa, which in turn will have far-reaching consequences on many other aspects of the relationship, including Africa to Europe migration, legal or otherwise. It is unfortunate that negotiations which will have such deep and long-term effects are being conducted with almost no involvement of the ordinary people who will most be affected by them.

There is deep disagreement between the EU and African countries on the benefits of the EPAs. The EU says that not only is signing them required to be in compliance with WTO rules, but it insists that the EPAs are beneficial to African economic development. It says they will foster African economic growth and integration, and will encourage greater intra-African trade, as well as forcing African economies and industries to become more competitive by gradually opening up to greater competition.

The EU also says they will be beneficial by spurring a shift away from African dependence on a few commodities, a trend which has left Africa weak and vulnerable, and with growth rates far behind those of Asia and Latin America. Beyond WTO requirements, the EU also says the EPAs are necessary medicine to move Africa away from a relationship of economic dependency of Europe. Cynics counter that this dependency relationship benefits Europe more than it does Africa, and incredulous at the suggestion that scrapping it is one of the EU’s motivations for pushing so hard for the signing of the EPAs. The EU in turn dismisses the many critics of EPAs as being alarmists who are naïve and unrealistic about what it will take to significantly move Africa forward economically.

While the African economic blocs negotiating EPAs have various region-specific objections, there are also many they have in common. First and foremost, regardless of issues of WTO compliance, they are coming to the negotiating table reluctantly. They would prefer to operate under the current dispensation of preferential tariff access of their goods into the EU, which has far fewer strings and reform requirements attached than do the EPAs that are being negotiated.

They protest that they are not ready for competition with the strong industries of Europe, and fear that their nascent economic sectors would be drowned out by the new competition. Apart from issues of vastly different levels of industrial productivity and sophistication, they also stress fears of the consequences of unfair competition, such as of their agricultural goods against the subsidised agriculture of Europe.

This is a particularly sore point because African economies and trade are heavily dependent on un-processed crops. If the African countries are apprehensive about the competition aspects of opening up their fragile economies, they are even more alarmed at the prospect of lost revenue entailed in lifting or reducing tariffs on imports into their economies, as Customs revenue are a significant source of income for most of them.

These are just some of the many points of contention between the EU and the African blocs, and the reasons why getting agreements on the EPAs has been so difficult. With just weeks to go before the signing deadline, there have been calls from the African blocs for extensions or major concessions by the EU on the most difficult issues. The EU has taken a carrot and stick approach, offering signing inducements and relenting on some points, while all the while insisting that the underlying reforms necessitated by the EPAs are unavoidable, necessary and good for Africa.

Whatever trade offs are agreed to between the negotiating parties, there seems little doubt that some version of EPAs will soon be signed, and that they will usher in significant changes in how the EU and Africa do business with each other, and with economic trends within Africa.

That is why the seemingly un-related issues of the rates of African migration to Europe and Economic Partnership Agreements between Africa and Europe are in fact closely aligned. Precisely how the two issues will be linked depends to a great extent on whether the post-EPA signing reality is the positive one cited by its EU promoters, or the calamitous one feared by its African doubters and opponents. Either outcome will have wide-ranging repercussions, including on migration rates.

If the EPAs do indeed promote greater economic growth in African countries, and if that growth is widely and perceivably felt by sections of even those levels of society that have so lost hope at home that they are willing to die on the open seas trying to get to Europe, then perhaps an eventual lowering of illegal migration would be one result. Presumably many would-be migrants would then choose to pursue opportunities at home rather than risk life and limb on the high seas, trying to reach the distant European unknown.

Yet even if the EPAs are more positive for Africa than negative, they are unlikely to produce those results in the short term, and in ways that would be widely felt in African societies. Africa’s structural economic problems go far beyond the limited trade scope of the EPAs.

Where the EPAs are likely to have the greatest potential effect on Africa to Europe migration rates is if they fail. For Africa, that failure would include being swamped by more competitively produced European goods, resulting in the collapse of what few, weak industries there are, with all the associated effects on employment, tax revenues and so forth. If the much feared loss of Customs revenue is also a significant part of the post-EPA reality, that would also have a cascade effect on national budgets, social spending, etc.

If the worst African EPA nightmare came true and in addition to all the other EPA ill-effects feared by African governments, the continent was also no longer able to export as much agricultural produce to Europe, then the results would be as catastrophic as EPA opponents allege, despite EU dismissals of “scare-mongering.” Export earnings would decline, farming would be under even more pressure than it is now from various factors, setting off a chain of social and economic effects in heavily agriculture-dependent countries.

The potential negative effects of the EPAs on migration in the event of their failure are therefore far greater than the potential positive effects in the event of their success, certainly in the short to medium term. “Negative effects” here means tens of thousands more Africans risking their lives to try to get into Europe by any means possible, if they perceive there to be even less opportunity and hope at home in the post-EPA era than before.

Probably no one on either side can accurately predict what is going to be the outcome of the EPAs. But if the scenario leans more towards the “negative” one, it is not difficult to guess that regardless of whatever obstacles would have been put in the way; Europe would be seen as a viable escape route by even more Africans than today, no matter how unrealistically.

Some EPA opponents who agree that the economic and trade relations between Europe and Africa need revision argue that the EPAs are not the right means of reform, because of what they identify as their many flaws. Still, and quite apart from the WTO’s requirements and its looming deadline, the fact of the matter is that the balance of negotiating power is overwhelmingly in the EU’s favour. So in one form or another, EPAs are going to be signed, even if the African blocs grumble about it to the last minute. Indeed, some in Europe see little need to be negotiating new trade terms at all. They argue that the EU has the power to unilaterally impose trade terms on the African blocs, even if that would be politically unpalatable on all sides for all kinds of historical and other reasons.

Many in Africa see the increasing number of non-tariff barriers to trade the EU is imposing as part of this unilateralism. There is no pretence of negotiation between the EU and would be exporters when these regulatory and other barriers are being put up: you either scramble to abide by them or your goods simply don’t get into Fortress Europe, case closed. The result is that access to EU markets for African exporters is getting tougher all the time, regardless of what is happening in regards to the EPAs.

In short, we could be about to see the signing of a raft of EU-Africa Economic Partnership Agreements that involve very little actual partnership or agreement!

Migration issues are way outside the ambit of the EPA talks and are probably far from the minds of the various negotiators. Similarly, intricate Africa-Europe trade issues are probably not part of the conscious decision of those who sail from West Africa to Europe in small wooden boats, in search of their El Dorado.

But there is no doubt that the two issues will increasingly intersect, and perhaps even clash with one another. The signing of the EPAs will be yet another defining moment in the long, not always happy relationship between Africa and Europe. Apart from whichever of the positive and negative consequences that are being predicted come to pass, with the EPAs are likely to also come all sorts of unknown and un-intended consequences.