Proposals to outsource asylum claims to overseas processing centres were first championed by the British government over a year ago and revived, with Italian backing, by Germany’s Interior Minister Otto Schilly in October. The most immediate impetus were the tides – almost literally – of refugees and migrants washing up on the island of Lampedusa. This barely habited outpost of Italy is the closest point in Europe to the Libyan coastline, from where most of the overcrowded boatloads set off.
In the week prior to Schilly’s debate, five hundred people landed there in a single day, and eight hundred others in the previous three days, echoing the chaos that beset the island’s reception centres at the end of August. Around five thousand drown attempting to cross the Mediterranean each year.
