BRUSSELS—Divisions over migration threaten the European Union’s future, embattled German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned Thursday, as leaders gathered for a summit that could show the sway of newly empowered populists.
Alongside debates about trans-Atlantic trade fights, eurozone reforms and Brexit, leaders of the EU’s 28 countries are focusing on an intense battle over migrants coming to the bloc across the Mediterranean Sea.
Italy’s new anti-immigration government has refused to take migrants back from Germany and Ms. Merkel’s Bavarian junior coalition partner has threatened to leave her government if she doesn’t resolve the problem by Sunday.
“Europe faces many challenges, but that of migration could become the make-or-break one for the EU,” Ms. Merkel told the German parliament Thursday morning before departing for Brussels.
European leaders were set to talk over dinner about how to handle the problem. Many expect the talks will go far past midnight.
While the number of people arriving illegally in Europe has declined significantly since its peak in 2015, the issue has become a central focus for nationalist politicians in Italy, Austria and Germany.
"My assessment is that this isn’t so much a migrant crisis as a political crisis,” said Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar on arriving at the summit.
Some European officials fear a failure to agree could trigger the swift reintroduction of strict border controls in Germany and Austria and a decision by Italy and other southern countries to close their ports to ships carrying migrants.
Summit attendees will try to agree on plans to limit the inflow of migrants, better control their movements inside the EU and potentially return many to their countries of origin.
“We have to deal with the fact that whilst the numbers are currently low… we are not ready for the next crisis,” said Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte.
EU countries along the Mediterranean complain that they are forced to shoulder the cost and social problems resulting from thousands of people arriving on their shores.
Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte said he expects concrete results from the meeting, not just words of support.
“It will be a watershed moment,” he said, warning that if that doesn’t happen, he could veto the summit’s conclusions.
That would be a huge blow to Ms. Merkel’s pledge in Germany that she could find European solutions to the problem.
A controversial idea gaining currency is setting up centers, dubbed “disembarkation zones” in Africa along the Mediterranean or in countries further south. The concept has been cautiously endorsed by the United Nations’s refugee and migration agencies, provided they help making rescues at sea more efficient and avoid further deaths, after nearly 1,000 people lost their lives this year trying to cross.
European officials, however, have so far been unable to provide specifics on how the plan would work, which countries would the host the zones or how refugees with genuine asylum claims would be resettled in the bloc.
Officials have said that to persuade African countries to accept these zones, Europe would need to offer money, better trade access and other benefits that would be expensive. The EU has already given €3 billion ($3.5 billion) in recent years to help Turkey house Syrian refugees and prevent them from traveling on into the bloc.
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said the disembarkment zones could be a key to tackling migration pressures by preventing people getting automatic access to the EU while their case is decided.
“Rescues in the Mediterranean shouldn’t automatically translate into tickets to Central Europe,” he said.
One widely accepted part of EU plans is to boost patrols and enforcement along the EU’s borders.
“The invasion should be stopped and to stop the invasion means to have strong border controls,” said Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, one of the EU’s most outspoken opponents of admitting migrants.
Even as Ms. Merkel’s political fate is threatened, the German chancellor struck an unusually low-key note at a pre-summit meeting of center-right European leaders.
While she usually takes center-stage at the meeting, she stayed only briefly and avoided talking about German politics, something she has never done in the past, according to one person in the room.
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