More than any other issue, the migrant one is truly a ticking time bomb. It has the potential to wreak havoc in Europe, severely fragmenting the EU and sowing conflict among member-states. It creates pressure on all governments on the continent; and, further, generates frustrations and anxieties that sustain the rise of populist parties of the right and the left - which ride the wave of anti-EU and anti-migrant sentiment.
The meeting of the EU Justice and Home Affairs Ministers failed last July to reach an agreement on how to share the burden of 40,000 refugees and asylum seekers. The divisions have only exacerbated since then, with anger at the UK for its refusal to "bear its share of the burden", and with Hungary moving ahead with erecting a wall at its border with Serbia to stem the flow of migrants. "If that is your idea of Europe you can keep it," said the Italian prime minister to his fellow leaders as he was disgusted by the lack of solidarity with his country, which is bearing the brunt of the migrants crisis.
On the face of it, considering that 200,000 migrants and asylum-seekers have arrived in Europe so far this year, the number might look minuscule compared with the EU's total population of 450 million people. A still wealthy continent should be able to absorb this relatively small number of people. However, this is a 50 per cent increase from 2014, and the migration challenge is already generating tremendous fears in Europe about the loss of identity. There are also very serious concerns about migrants creating downward pressures on wages in an era of economic uncertainties and vulnerability for significant parts of the existing European population.
What makes the migrant issue so explosive is that it is a combination of intractable dilemmas. The first dilemma is that the influx of refugees and migrants will not stop unless its root causes - conflicts and desperate economic conditions - are addressed. However, the members of the EU don't have the means - and might not have the will - to address these causes. This would require in some cases huge economic and technical assistance - beyond what Europe can afford financially and politically - and would mean putting some of these countries under a quasi economic-protectorate. In other cases, this would mean massive military intervention in countries such as Syria, Libya, and Sudan from where most of the migrants and refugees are originating.
In the absence of such intervention, what would be, at least, needed is decisive military intervention against the gangs of human traffickers that exact enormous amounts of money from desperate people to make them cross the Mediterranean in horrific conditions. However, no such intervention can be expected in the foreseeable future.
At the same time, for moral and humanitarian reasons - or fears of the outcry that this would provoke - European leaders recoil at the idea of taking the kind of very tough stance that Australia has adopted very successfully to dissuade any illegal migrants to come to its shores. After more than 2,000 deaths at sea last spring they were even forced to resume full-scale maritime operations of the sort stopped last fall because they were seen as encouraging migrants to take the risk of sea travel to Europe on shoddy embarkations. So the dilemma remains the same: Figuratively speaking, either letting migrants drown or being drowned by them.
The second set of dilemmas is the fact that European countries are bound by the UN Convention on Refugees in their policy towards migrants. However, the global situation has drastically changed since this Convention was adopted. At the time, refugees originated from countries which were in a temporary situation of war or internal conflicts; they would seek asylum as close as possible from the home country, and it was expected that most of them would go back home once the conflict ended. During the the Cold War, refugees were fleeing totalitarian communist regimes but had the means in terms of culture and education to integrate relatively easily, for the majority of them, into the countries of asylum.
Today, the majority of refugees are either pure economic refugees, or combine the status of asylum-seeker in the traditional sense of the term, and of economic refugee. In addition to that, most present conflicts have no end or solution in sight. We see today a proliferation of conflicts or civil wars in under-developed countries, as the end of the Cold War has opened an era of geopolitical volatility. (The confrontation between the West and the communist bloc was in some ways "containing" local conflicts lest they would degenerate into a global war.)
This means that the sources of Europe's refugees and asylum-seekers will not dry up any time soon, and that the European countries will have to continue absorbing people who, in their majority, are of a different culture, with a low or inexistent level of education, and who will probably never return voluntarily to their home country. And then there is the unspoken issue that, as a very great percentage of these migrants are of Muslim faith with high fertility rates, this will play into the hands of all those raising the spectre of an "Islamisation of Europe" - with the backlash this will create.
However, while the international institutional framework regarding refugees and asylum seekers no longer corresponds to the present geopolitical and economic context, no country would dare to publicly raise this issue, and launch an international debate to adapt the International Conventions to today's realities. This would expose any country or personality doing that to accusations of national egotism, racism, callous heartlessness, and so on.
So, European leaders are stuck with an explosive issue that will not disappear any time soon, even though the flow of refugees might slow down when fall and winter weather makes the crossing of the Mediterranean more difficult. Either these leaders will have the courage, and take the risks, of a tougher approach against this wave of migrants, or they will be swept away at the next election... and will contribute to - and bear responsibility for - the next big European crisis.
Claude Smadja is president of Smadja & Smadja, a strategic advisory firm
Twitter: @ClaudeSmadja
Twitter: @ClaudeSmadja