The EU should stop seeking refuge from the refugee crisis

The scenes from the Idomeni refugee camp remind me of the acclaimed 2004–2005 anime TV series Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd GIG (a geeky title, indeed).

The year is 2030, internet and cyber technology have become part of the very fabric of society — cyberbrains, prosthetic bodies, remote controlled cyborgs and optical camouflage are the new normal. The main protagonists come from a special unit called Public Security Section 9, uncovering a complicated plot of machinations and power plays enmeshing personal, national, international and private interests focused on the 3 million refugees in the reclaimed island of Dejima right off the coast in Nagasaki, Japan. The story unfolds in the aftermath of two world wars, when about three million Asians become refugees and are invited in Japan as a source of cheap labor. When many of them become unemployed, social unrest starts to brew, threatening to become an all out war fueled by the “individualists” calling for national isolation. A key moment in the plot is a suicide attack by a terrorist group called the Individual Eleven. There is also a charismatic refugee leader, government officials operating with virtually no oversight and strong interference from the likes of Russia and the American Empire (as the United States are called in the series at this point in time).

Why Idomeni reminded me of the series? Because, despite the high-tech future and the vastly improved physical and mental capacities of people, key elements in the refugee crisis scenario seem oddly familiar. I will focus only on one aspect related to the current crisis — the attitude, motivation and capabilities of the European Union to act in a critical situation.

You have probably heard the phrase “The hour of Europe” by the Luxembourgian politician Jacques Poos, coined in 1991 in the beginning of the breakup of former Yugoslavia. Since then, we’ve had a number of “hours of Europe”, symbolizing a moment when decisive action needs to be taken in the face of daunting circumstances. It seems that the current refugee and migrant crisis can easily qualify for the phrase — now is indeed the time to act. But how?

It seems that we have already seen everything — European Council summits, common policy proposals by the European Commission, open door policies from Germany, border fences and a chain reaction of unilateral border closures, new alliances in Central and Eastern Europe and swift agreements with Turkey. Many of these actions are natural and expected, some are surprising, a few can be considered risky and dangerous.

What we haven’t seen at all, however, is even a feeble attempt towards solving the crisis in a different way. On paper, EU’s Europe 2020 sounds like the most ambitious strategy on the planet. It positions the Union as an actor that is ready to experiment, try new approaches and set forward-looking targets — in short, it aims to create an innovation-driven society fit for the challenges of the 21st century. There is even a flagship initiative called Innovation Union.

Isn’t the current refugee and migrant crisis the perfect opportunity to demonstrate this approach? To show that the EU, unlike all other traditional actors, dares to be different? Alas, no. You can choke on innovation references when it comes to clusters, R&D programmes and high-tech partnerships. But when it comes to managing almost unprecedented flows of people by EU institutions, Member States and NGOs, innovation goes right out the dinghy boat.

The EU is ill-prepared to face this challenge not because of lack of resources, but because of lack of attitude. When we need to act as true problem solvers and find new solutions, we are quick to put our innovation ambitions on the side. This is when power politics kicks in — by Member States who don’t want to implement a common solution and choose to act on their own and by institutions like the Commission who put the blame squarely on them with an overbearing tone (just read the introduction of the latest Commission Communication “on the State of Play of Implementation of the Priority Actions under the European Agenda on Migration”).

The most radical threat to the EU does not come from radical extremists. It comes from the radical refusal of national and European leaders to solve problems in a different way.

To be fair, they don’t see any substantial help from the innovation community, either. There are a number of innovation initiatives when it comes to refugees — from a big UNHCR platform to grassroots initiatives such as Refugees Welcome. The problem with them? They don’t address the core problems and offer incremental, marginal solutions, which only contribute to the notion that innovation is simply an alternative path for smaller scale issues, a cool way to play on the sidelines of the problem. How useful would a mobile app for informing refugees be when they take all the information they need from existing Facebook groups? How useful would a life jacket from discarded PET bottles be when a French honorary consul in Bodrum sells real life jackets to refugees who want to cross the Mediterranean?

There are exceptions, of course. A project worth mentioning is Better Shelter, which seems to solve a real problem in a human-centered way. The ideas put forth by Alexander Betts at his recent TED talk also show ambition and vision. Yet these are exceptions to the rule — the innovation-averse traditional politics and the often naive, altruistic solutions by organizations, NGOs and social enterprises are involved in the same crisis, but never seem to meet each other in the middle, where something new, yet workable in practice, might emerge.

The refugee and migrant crisis can be described as a “wicked problem”. According to the definition by Rittel and Webber (1973), wicked problems are “difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognise. Moreover, because of complex interdependencies, the effort to solve one aspect of a wicked problem may reveal or create other problems.” At first, this sounds disheartening — how can we even hope to solve this in the long term? A second view reveals an opportunity — if we stop thinking about the current situation through the narrow lens of refugees, armed conflicts, migration routes and border controls, we will move one step forward in finding a solution. Simple, straightforward solutions won’t work, no matter how much money we throw at them or how much we are prepared to sacrifice in order to make our neighbours cooperate (the fresh takeover of the Zaman newspaper by the Turkish government is a case in point). The refugee and migrant crisis is inextricably linked with human development, social policies, education, labour market, entrepreneurship, childcare services — issues that are present in EU Member States with our without refugees. One doesn’t need to go that far back in time — just read the story of Chérif Kouachi and Amedy Coulibaly published in Der Spiegel about an year ago. Don’t remember who they were? The two Charlie Hebdo attackers who spent years in a social environment that completely failed them, turning into radicalized terrorists in the middle of Europe. Oddly similar is the story of one of the attackers in Bataclan, Samy Amimour, who drove bus 148 as an employee of RATP, the French capital’s public transport authority.

We cannot wait for crises to come to our borders and then panic. We cannot claim that big data will change how business is done and not use it to predict mass movements of people before they even happen. We cannot calmly accept that there is a humanitarian operation of Médecins Sans Frontières in Calais, France, as if we are in a war-torn country. We cannot continue to have a one size fits all approach to “refugees and migrants”, without acknowledging that they are Syrians, Afghans, Iraqis, Sudanese, Eritreans, Ukrainians, Nigerians, Kosovars, doctors, engineers, students, businessmen, farmers, jobless or (possibly) radicalized youngsters. We cannot brag about our competitive advantages vis-a-vis America or Asia and yet fail to tackle poverty and social isolation in our own populations, let alone among immigrants (half a million Bulgarian pensioners live with the astonishing 80 Euros per month). We cannot ignore the fact that EU citizens are afraid that migrants can take their low-skilled jobs or social welfare benefits while continuing to make use of them and refusing to learn or improve their skills. We cannot be surprised when refugees and migrants choose to go to Germany, bypassing Greece, Hungary or Bulgaria — if you make an EU-wide poll of preferred destinations to live, I doubt that the latter three will be on top of your list, either. We cannot treat these migrants as helpless individuals who cannot fend for themselves when they might be the highest motivated people in the world, willing to go through fire, land and water to reach EU’s shores. We cannot complain about the terrible conditions in refugee camps and yet refuse to create opportunities for their residents to work, learn and play. We cannot express fear that these people will change our way of life while complaining about it all the time.

It’s time for a new approach towards solving complex social problems spanning EU’s own Member States, EU’s neighbours and EU’s foreign and security policy to the world at large. We have the tools. We have the human potential. We are better equipped to deal with such situations than ever before. Yet none of this matters because we just don’t have the attitude to solve problems differently.

Even if this text was full of concrete, ready-to-implement solutions, none of them would matter without the right attitude. That is why you won’t find any. Instead, I offer a message: let’s stop hiding behind business as usual. Let’s make difficult choices, claim responsibility, take action, find new solutions and make them happen. Let’s prove that we are the Innovation Union that we aspire to be. Any other option will be a failure for all, except for the ones that profit from this crisis day after day.