Given the incessant bickering between EU countries over migration issues, it’s time to think outside the box. Here is the 5-Point Dilemma.
- Germany Merkel’s CDU: Seek a consensus solution under existing EU rules.
- Germany Seehofer’s CSU: Turn them back at the border (i.e. Send them back to Italy through Austria)
- Italy Five Star and the League: Change the “Dublin Rules” which state migrants must apply for asylum in the first country in which they land. Italy wants to distribute existing migrants throughout EU. It also supports “safe areas” in Africa.
- Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia: All refuse new migrants
- Austria: Austria’s Prime Minister, Sebastian Kurz, wants quotas and “safe areas” in refugees’ countries of origin. In a controversial twist, he said Brussels should organize it and “back it militarily.”
I cannot take credit for this brilliant idea, but Europe needs a wall, and Africa needs to pay for it.
Eurointelligence Comments
Angela Merkel knows she is not going to get a refugee deal. The question is, can she sell what she will get to her sceptical sister party? Will she get a bit of extra time, enough to tide her over until after the Bavarian election? Will it enable the CSU to claim victory, or at least avoid humiliation?
We cannot rule out that the CSU falters at the last minute. But they have leaned themselves so far out of the window that a last-minute retreat would be considered a hard sell, politically. If the purpose of this exercise was to score points ahead of the Bavarian election, a retreat would be the equivalent of losing at football against South Korea.
Giuseppe Conte secured his senior team’s backing for a hard line in the Council negotiations. The Huffington Post Italia report this morning that he is going to Brussels with the determination to veto any agreement on refugees unless there is a commitment to reform the Dublin regulation.
One issue the CSU will have to explain – and hasn’t done so – is how the CSU’s plan would work in practice. [See Point Number 2 above] Austrian interior minister Herbert Kickl, a member of the FPÖ and a close ally of Salvini’s said if Germany decides to send back refugees, Austria would not take them. And we cannot see Italy taking them either. So, where would they go?
And we noted before that Italy could easily respond to Seehofer’s unilateralism by failing to register refugees. That would be a blatant violation of the Dublin regulation, but Seehofer’s position is also in breach of European rules. [See point number 3]
This would be a battle that would pitch German nationalists on the one side, and Austrian/Italian nationalists on the other. This is a somewhat unfamiliar dividing line in European politics. [See point number 1]
In terms of the feasibility of Tusk’s strategy to solve the problem at the external border, we share the scepticism of the CSU. It is illusionary to think that the EU will be able to protect its borders to stem the flow of immigrants completely. The option of building a wall, and letting Africa pay for it, is simply not available because of geography. [Right on the crux of victory, Eurointelligence threw away the logical solution.]
Floating Safe Areas
This brilliant idea seems to handle all positions except point number one. But Merkel will soon be gone so who cares?
To address point number 5, the EU can build floating safe areas in the Mediterranean Sea.
Government Spending Pays For Itself!
Many naysayers will pooh-pooh this project, but please remember the primary thrust of Keynesian and MMT theory: Government spending pays for itself!
Jobs Galore
A massive number of jobs will stem from this project! Inflation? You bet. It’s nearly every economist’s wet dream at the moment.
Rather than paying people to do nothing, we can pay them to build the world’s most beautiful wall, complete with hanging gardens.
The wall will be so beautiful, Tourists will pay to go see it.
Condos
We can build condos on the North side of the wall, well away from floating safe areas on the south side of the wall. Artificial reefs? Sure. Fishing will be fantastic.
Krugman Approved!
Given that Paul Krugman once proposed (seriously) the world could use a fake space alien threat to spur growth, how could he possibly object to this marvelous project.
Krugman later claimed he was being facetious, but play the video. He was dead serious.
He even admitted to Bill Maher on Real Time that he was serious.
Instead of wasting money fighting a fictional space alien threat, why not build a great wall?
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
I made a plan for EU How to solve the asylum seeker crisis, migrant crisis, schengen crisis, political crisis.
The plan will also lower the number of arrivals, ensure efficient returns of failed asylum seekers and economic migrants, stop secondary movement help people in refugee camps and stop smuggling and stop drownings and keep Merkel in power by solving all the problems Greece, Italy, Merkel and EU itself caused since 2015.
Please read and comment and spread if you feel like it:
They’re risking far more than pensions, of course. I see a population that still believes it has much to lose, so this will to fight back to the fullest seems very unlikely.
Trump’s rhetoric is also counterproductive to this end, always talking up markets and unemployment. Why waste all this time with tariffs if we’re fighting for our very survival in our own cities, as you suggest?
They have to be willing to lose EVERYTHING. If they’re at all concerned about keeping a pension, having money in the bank, investments, a job, etc they won’t persevere. Only total commitment could bring success.
Of course, that opens up a whole other can of worms with digging ourselves out of the rubble, but we’ll see if they’ve got the cojones to make it that far.
As a citizen of an emerging market and now as a resident in a Western country, I’ve seen both sides of the immigration coin… And I’m always struck by how strong the support for immigrants is in the developed world!
As a citizen of a poor country, the rule was really simple – if you were an employee, you didn’t want an illegal immigrant competing for your job. If you were an employer, you couldn’t get enough of them – they are so much cheaper and don’t complain at all.
Since immigrants are welcomed a lot more in certain Western countries – my only conclusion is that it is the business class that runs politics here!
After all politics is the art of balancing fundamentally incompatible demands – demands from businesspeople (who a politician needs money from) and people (who a politician needs votes from). It seems the businesspeople are winning a lot more!
So you’re saying the ME elites are less corrupt than ours, or at least they care more about the fate of their own people?
It’s strange reading so many whiny responses to what was clearly intended as a humorous post. I suppose all this butthurt shouldn’t be surprising, deep down everyone knows that these problems originate with our own financial elite, who the populace has no control over. They also know that if they attempt to rein in the 0.01% they will face an overwhelming military and law enforcement response, plus they’d lose everything in the ensuing market crash even if they manage to make headway.
Personal impression from spending time in the Middle East — what those countries have which Europeans (and, sadly, the US) don’t have, is a fully functioning legal immigration system and a very low tolerance for illegal immigration.
There is no messing around, no endless appeals — illegals get sent straight back, along with legal immigrants who break a law. Immigrants are brought in to fill specific jobs, and when the contract is over, they are sent back.
It is like the immigrants are there for the benefit of the country — not vice versa as in Europe or the US.
Just arrest the smuggling rings, their pay masters, and propagandists in the media. The cheapest solution.
Let’s see. Rich arab countries (with higher per capita income than ANY EU country) don’t seem to have any problems with illegals, refugees or migrants.
Seems strange. These places are rich, plenty of land and islamic. And are CLOSER too. Why don’t the illegals, refugees and migrants go there?
What are they doing (or not doing) compared to the EU?
The brilliant idea would be to dissolve the EU as a political entity. Germany is a sovereign nation. Italy is a sovereign nation.
As always in financialized dystopias, the most important thing about a wall, is Africa has no money. So, the wall needs to be “financed.” In a world where not one single decision maker anywhere, retains sufficient competence to actually build or create anything of value; pretending that “financing” things with printed-out-of-nowhere money, is somehow an important undertaking, helps the deadweights feel like they are somehow useful and important. Which they, of course, are not.
By “financing” the wall in “the market,” (yep that one, the one printed out of thin air for the benefit of welfare queens in high places…), the usual army of welfare recipients get to collect sales commissions for selling the bonds. And then, when Africans doesn’t pay what “they owe”, whether because they can’t afford to be, or don’t feel like, paying; the Fed/ECB needs to rob productive people by debasement. To buy the bonds at money-good prices from the welfare queens. In order to prevent the system from collapsing.
Remember, preventing “the system from collapsing” is really important to all those too incompetent to accomplish anything else, than mooch off a system of forced redistribution. To themselves, from their productive betters.
The EU needs a Marshall plan for Africa/Mid East. Better still bring down tariff barriers to agricultural goods to help countries trade their way out of poverty. Oh, forgot, no chance of that if Spanish orange farmers impacted etc.
Part of the Wall goes in AFrica: its preventive.
Then you ship all invaders immediately back to Southern Africa en mass and drop them off.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. Make them pay?? Just stop funding them with Whitey’s money as is done NOW.
Some basic truths: Access to White people is not a human right
There was a wall – Quadaffi / Libya. Hillary and Obama overthrew him in one of those color revolutions.
I think you’re on to something here, Mish. The Mediterranean is quite scenic, so they should top the wall with windows to give passing ships/tourists more uninhibited views. In the event of a more severe economic downturn, the windows could be “accidentally” broken, then fixed with ECB stimulus money! I don’t know what you’d call these jobs (shovel-ready doesn’t spring to mind in the water) but there must be a catchy name. Maybe the windows could be broken with shovels!
The only remining hitch is which African country should be on the hook for initial wall construction costs. I’m thinking Swaziland. Sure, they’re tiny, poor, and nowhere near the Mediterranean, but they’re trying to change their name to Eswatini, annoying cartographers and geography teachers everywhere. Maybe this is the price they pay?
Oh, and having dated a woman from Istanbul in the distant past, I think the Turks wouldn’t take kindly to the wall going through the Bosporus (per the map), cleaving Istanbul (and Turkey) in twain. Some serious palm greasing would have to happen to make this a possibility… maybe a combination of ECB/Africa funds would suffice? Maybe Erdogan gets to take part in the next Saudi glowing orb/sword dance? We recently refused to sell any F-35s to Turkey, so we’ve already done them one enormous favor.