Interview: Europe must tackle roots of migration: French expert

Europe needs to tackle the migration crisis in the countries of origin, not only at the point of arrival on the European continent, said Catherine de Wenden, an expert on migration issues.

Floods of migrants are risking their lives to reach Europe having escaped political crisis and war, mainly in Africa, Libya, Iraq, and Syria.

De Wenden, director of research at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), stressed "as long as the situation in their native countries does not allow migrants to live with acceptable conditions, we will have more of them."

"Most migrants are asylum seekers who arrive in Europe because they are hopeless at home," she told Xinhua in an interview.

Despite the series of measures adopted by European leaders, migrants continue to flock to Europe -- which is why European leaders should help to resolve the crisis in the migrants' native countries, according to the expert.

"There are some migration situations for which the intervention of European countries is required to better fix the crisis. The Horn of Africa, Afghanistan, Iraq crises were partly caused by external intervention and have also created a dramatic situation," said the French researcher.

"There is a need for a political solution to make countries where migrants come from aware of their responsibility and to handle the situations created in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq... and concerning this issue, there aren't many initiatives," she added.

De Wenden also called on migrant's origin countries to intensify mobilization as "many African countries, including heads of state or their ambassadors, do not denounce the situation of their nationals who die at Europe's rim."

According to the expert, it would take more than "cooperation and dialogue" to solve the migration crisis.

"It's the root of the crisis that should be studied and not only when the migrants' arrive. Deterrence policies solve nothing," she said.

Asked about unified response to asylum in the European Union proposed by French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, de Wenden said she saw difficulties in putting the proposal in effect.

"It's the reality of the thing that will be difficult to implement," she noted, arguing that each European country has its own way to outline the profile of asylum seekers who can have refuge in a country and that can be refused by the neighbor state.

In addition, Hollande and Merkel's proposal required harmonization of European countries' diplomacy towards the states exporting migrants. Unfortunately, "it's not yet the case because there are interests which are different in this or that region of the world," she said.

Regarding the France-Britain deal on migration crisis, the expert denounced the strict security approach, saying there had been a lot of deaths between Calais and the Channel Tunnel. She said France had the means to better accommodate the migrants but was not doing so to maintain the idea of deterrence.

To De Wenden, it's necessary to find an agreement which treats migrants' profiles on a "case by case" basis, meaning migrants who would better integrate into British society could be accepted by London and those who seemed to be better able to manage to live in France would stay on French territory. Endit