Migration could be ‘dissolving force for EU’, says bloc’s top diplomat

Brussels: Migration could be “a dissolving force for the European Union” due to deep cultural differences between European countries and their long-term inability to reach a common policy, the EU’s most senior diplomat has said.

Although Russia will try to fan the flames on migration inside Europe, Josep Borrell denied that the conflict in Ukraine was contributing to the crisis, which he described as a decades-old problem fuelled by wars and poverty in departure countries.

The EU’s external affairs commissioner said the bloc had performed miracles in the war, and that it was one of the key forces forging a new world order in which the global south deserved greater respect and power.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Guardian reflecting on how the EU had been changed by the war and where the bloc fits in this new world order, he said European countries had been forced to wake from a siesta on defence spending, in which they had lived under the American nuclear umbrella.

Josep Borrell speaks during a UN security council emergency meeting to discuss the situation between Armenia and Azerbaijan.

He called for greater defence cooperation and quicker decisions on the supply of weapons to Ukraine and defended the faltering counteroffensive, saying the country was one-third mined and it would have been suicidal for Ukraine to have mounted a full-frontal counterattack.

At a subsequent lecture at the New York University Law School, he said the UN security council had been proved “completely useless in recent years due to its divisions” and called for an overhaul of political and financial institutions to revive a multilateralism that “is outdated and running out of steam”.

In recent days Italy’s far-right prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, who came to power on the back of controversial rhetoric about the rise of migration, said she would not allow her country to become “Europe’s refugee camp” after 11,000 people arrived on the island of Lampedusa in a matter of days.

Borrell said nationalism was on the rise in Europe but this was more about migration than Euroscepticism. “Brexit actually was feared to be an epidemic. And it has not been,” he said. “It has been a vaccine. No one wants to follow the British leaving the European Union.

“Migration is a bigger divide for the European Union. And it could be a dissolving force for the European Union.” Despite establishing a shared common external border, “we have not been able until now to agree on a common migration policy”, he said.

He attributed this to deep cultural and political differences inside the EU: “There are some members of the European Union that are Japanese-style – we don’t want to mix. We don’t want migrants. We don’t want to accept people from outside. We want our purity.”

He said other countries, such as Spain, have a long history of accepting migrants. “The paradox is that Europe needs migrants because we have so low demographic growth. If we want to survive from a labour point of view, we need migrants.”

Borrell insisted in the interview that the war in Ukraine was not fuelling the current rows over migration. “The issue is that migration pressure has been increasing, mainly due to wars – not the war against Ukraine … It is the Syrian war, the Libyan war, the military coups in Sahel.

“We are living in a circle of instability from Gibraltar to the Caucasus and this happened before the Ukrainian war and will continue after the Ukrainian war. Migration in Africa is not being caused by the war against Ukraine. The root causes of migration in Africa are lack of development, economic growth and bad governance.”

He said European efforts to cooperate with some African countries had been made more difficult by the existence of military regimes. He described the Wagner group, the Russian mercenary outfit, as “the praetorian guard of the African dictators”.

Asked if he believed Russia would try to fan the flames of migration, Borrell said “Putin will try everything”. He added: “Putin believes that democracies are weak, fragile, they get tired and time is running on his side, because sooner or later we will get exhausted.

“And this is a political battle as much as a military battle. It has to be explained with arguments. Certainly, nobody likes to pay more for the electricity bills. I believe in democracy as a pedagogical exercise, and I believe that people understand the reasons.”

But he also acknowledged the harsh choices Europe faced in curbing migration by reaching deals with countries such as Tunisia, pointing out it was his duty to defend not just European values but at the same time European interests. “The life of the diplomat is full of uncomfortable choices … Foreign policy is working for the values and the interests of the European Union. And these require, in some cases, difficult choices trying all the time to respect international law and human rights.”