Fair share?

Two years after agreeing on a New Pact on Migration and Asylum, the EU has once again assured Spain that it is not on its own in dealing with migratory pressures. This week, the EU Commission said that Spain, Cyprus, Greece and Italy - four of the nations hardest-hit by illegal immigration - will be able to relocate a quota of new arrivals to other nations, or receive financial support from them, via a "solidarity pool" that is expected to be operational by the middle of next year.

In principle, the idea seems fair and rational. Say you live in a tiny flat and earn just enough to get by. The rest of your street is made up of households of varying wealth and size - two bedrooms, three, four, all the way up to a ten-bed mansion. One day, fifty refugees arrive. It would be unfair and impractical for them all to crowd into your shoebox apartment, so a central committee divides them up according to house size and income level. Or forces wealthier households to give poorer homeowners money so they can buy bigger flats and take in more of the new arrivals. Problem solved.

The reality, of course, is not so simple. Ironically, the main problem with the "solidarity pool" is that it assumes a level of solidarity within the bloc that simply doesn't exist, at least with regard to migration. Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic have already stated that they will not comply with the scheme, either by welcoming asylum seekers or paying a 20,000-euro fine each time they deny someone entry.

This is not just due to staunch anti-immigration stances (although in Poland and Hungary that is certainly a factor). According to the EU, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Poland, Estonia, Croatia and Austria have "significant" migratory problems and can therefore opt out of supporting other nations. Belgium, Germany, Ireland, France, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Finland have been identified as at risk of migratory pressure, and may qualify for exemptions further down the line.

In addition to the four nations that the EU says have "acute" migratory pressures (Spain, Cyprus, Italy and Greece), eighteen of the bloc's 27 members are or might soon be eligible to opt-out of offering support to the remaining countries. But they will be eligible for assistance from those nations. So it looks as if a third of the EU's members will end up shouldering the burden of a load that was supposed to be distributed evenly.

To return to our imaginary street: say that several of the smallest and average-sized households have been granted exemptions on the basis of stretched domestic circumstances. Forty of the refugees have ended up in the mansion, while the remaining ten are split across just two houses. That doesn't seem fair either.