Peter Sutherland urges Juncker to create post of migration commissioner

UN special representative for migration Peter Sutherland has called on incoming European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker to establish a commission portfolio dedicated to the pressing issue of migration.

Ahead of Saturday’s extraordinary EU summit to agree key appointments, Mr Sutherland, a former European commissioner, told a Berlin conference that Brussels needed a new institutional approach as the number of international migrants rises to 232 million and beyond.

Mr Sutherland, chairman of Goldman Sachs International, was appointed by UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to co-ordinate the work of UN agencies dealing with migration issues.

He told a meeting of German diplomats in Berlin that failure to do the same at EU level would lead to even greater human tragedy at the EU’s borders – and greater political conflict within.

“At EU level we have a crisis in the Mediterranean,” he said.

“In the last days the UN refugee agency [UNHCR] said 1,600 people have died since the 1st of June this year, and this is probably an under-estimation.”

At present EU migration affairs are shared between justice and home affairs commissioners, something Mr Sutherland said had led to a narrow focus on migration as a matter of border control.

This failed to reflect the complexities of migration, he said, and allowed Europe’s populist parties to frame of migration as “people getting over borders”.

Co-ordinated response

Italy

has demanded a co-ordinated EU response to the migration issue, saying it cannot cope with the record numbers arriving on its shores from the African continent.

European commissioner for home affairs Cecilia Malmström met Italian interior minister Angelino Alfano yesterday.

In recent days Italy's coast guard rescued 364 would-be migrants after their crowded fishing boat sank en route from Libya, with another 270 people drowning.

A German government spokesman said yesterday that Berlin had not decided whether it supported the idea of a dedicated migration commissioner.