Europe’s New Flood of Refugees

Late last week a commandeered freighter broke through a blockade outside the southern Italian port of Bari, bringing more than 10,000 desperate Albanians to a country that was unprepared to receive them and unwilling to succor them.

Most have now been forcibly repatriated, after a wretched period ashore. Italy’s government meanwhile finds itself under widespread domestic criticism for failing to provide the Albanians with adequate food, shelter and sanitary facilities. Typical was the stinging commentary of Enzio Biagi in Milan’s Corriere della Sera: “The world’s fifth industrial power isn’t capable of distributing 10,000 cups of coffee in three days.”

On an imperative humanitarian level the government should indeed have been able to do much better. But what in fairness must be recognized is that Italy confronts a crisis that other European states have so far largely been spared. Italy is a victim of its proximity to the continent’s poorest country. Its Adriatic ports of Bari and Brindisi are just a short voyage from a land whose people, only now emerging from two generations of sometimes lunatic communist misrule, are making the terrible discovery that the 20th Century has passed them by.

Last March, Italy opened its doors to nearly 24,000 Albanians, most of them economic refugees. Since then it has sought to deal with the problem at its source by encouraging the less than effectual Albanian regime to keep its restive citizens at home. But Albania has precious little to work with; total European Community aid to the country of 3.4 million has been only about $2.5 million. Everyone agrees more must be done.

Western Europe is destined to remain a magnet to the poor and threatened peoples of the East for many years to come, with freer borders in the East facilitating the movement of those seeking greater economic opportunity.

If Yugoslavia collapses in internecine conflict or if civil strife erupts across the Soviet Union, then the flood of emigrants heading west will grow.

For now, the flight of forlorn Albanians is mainly Italy’s problem. But it could well prove to be the harbinger of a much larger problem, one that all Western European governments must brace themselves to deal with.