The Mediterranean Sea has once again cut short the dreams of a better life. Hundreds of migrants have gone down with their ship in one of the deepest regions of the sea west of Pylos in the Peloponnese.
The story has no end and is one that Lesvos is only too familiar with. The reaction of Fortress Europe, in the meantime, is to build bigger fences and to push back the problem away from its borders while the real causes of the migrations are fobbed off with the usual empty pronouncements both at national and international level. The shifts in population will only increase in the future as the effects of climate change start to really kick in, but many political leaders in European countries, particularly those on its borders, are primarily or only concerned with their own political future and short term national interests.
In many of the member states of the EU, the effects of climate change are expected to have dramatic consequences in the medium and long term, yet these are at best given only fleeting mention amongst all the electioneering rhetoric. The same is true of the demographic problem that many countries will be facing in the not too distant future. Populations are falling and ageing at the same time, and national economies will struggle to provide the present level of support.
Current nationalistic tendencies and the underlying racist sentiment in many quarters are not likely to go away any time soon but could there perhaps come a time when, instead of pushing migrants away, countries will be competing with each other to attract them in order to reinforce their workforce? It may seem unlikely but the alternative scenarios are even more frightening.