North Africa Archive

Earlier this month, the European Commission launched the European Agenda on Migration, intended to be a comprehensive new policy approach to trafficking, labor migration, border security and asylum issues. As European Commissioner for Migration Dimitris Avramopoulos has put it, “We need more legal routes for people to arrive to Europe safely, and to avoid deaths in the Mediterranean and other irregular migrant routes. We need more resettlement places.” The announcement comes as the migration crisis in Europe continues unabated. The same day the European Union launched the European Agenda on Migration, Italy rescued over 1,000 refugees in the Mediterranean Sea, […]

Last week, the European Union launched a review of its European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), its instrument for engaging with non-member states along the bloc’s edge from Eastern Europe to North Africa. Announced by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, and the commissioner responsible for ENP and enlargement negotiations, Johannes Hahn, the consultation process will review the ENP’s underlying principles and scope as well as the tools at its disposal. European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had promised a review of the policy within his first year in office. The ENP, established in 2004, governs the EU’s relations with 16 countries […]

Here is a modest proposal to resolve the Ukrainian crisis: NATO should invite the so-called Islamic State (IS) and Boko Haram to send fighters to assist Kiev’s battered military. Die-hard IS and Boko Haram extremists would surely be happy to battle the Russian-backed separatist forces in Ukraine and their Orthodox Christian-nationalist creed. For veteran Islamists, it would bring back memories of past glories in Afghanistan and Chechnya. This whole idea is clearly bonkers. But does it make more sense to ask Russia to help fight threats to Europe from IS and its affiliates in Africa and the Middle East? Last […]