With Hungary still on the naughty step over its insistence that its borders are its borders and that the EU’s asylum rules mean what they say, this Der Spiegel piece by Jan Puhl is well worth reading. It’s by no means uncritical of Hungary’s prime minister, the combative Viktor Orbán, and that’s understandable enough. Orbán is a complicated figure, having evolved from fairly conventional (classical) liberal and then center-right beginnings to the politician that he is now, someone who blends a somewhat Gaullist conservatism with more than a suggestion of Chicago’s (first) Mayor Daley and hints too of Italy’s postwar Christian Democrats. What is less complicated is his record of impressive electoral success.
And, despite some recent stumbles elsewhere, Orbán’s stance on the migrant issue shows that his political touch may not have deserted him:
Just under 70 percent of Hungarians support Orbán’s hardline approach
…On Monday, Hungary closed the last remaining hole in the 175-kilometer (109 mile) fence it has been built along the southern border to Serbia, one of the final stations on the Western Balkan route to Europe that has been the focal point in recent days of tens of thousands of refugees making their way from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and North Africa. On Tuesday, a new law went into effect in Hungary making illegal border crossings an offense punishable by up to three years in jail.
Some western European states may complain, but, as Puhl recognizes, even if Orbán is leading the charge, he is not isolated: “Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia and the Czech Republic also continue to reject the idea of mandatory EU [resettlement] quotas”.
In a message posted on Twitter, Czech interior minister Milan Chovanec said “the main problem in dealing with migration is currently the inconsistent German policy…Not even showing off muscles to neighbours across the border doesn’t hide [the problem],” added Chovanec, who opposed a mandatory relocation mechanism at Monday’s [EU] meeting.
Merkel took her decision on Syrian migrants unilaterally, something that is hardly an example of the European “solidarity” that she is forever going on about. Yes, she was entitled to take that decision. Despite her (and Brussels’) best efforts, Germany still has some shreds of sovereignty to its name. But to then come crying to other EU nations to insist (not ask) that they help clear up the mess is a bit much.
In the course of an intriguing article for Politico, Melik Kaylan digs deeper into the EU’s East/West divide:
….Countries that finally escaped from decades of imposed Marxist internationalism and gained their right to unfettered nation-statehood by joining the West now find themselves shackled to another supranational system enforcing its own rules of diversity and multiculturalism. They thought they were finally allowed to recover their own identity, traditions and customs, their sense of “ethnos,” of being a cohesive “people.” Instead, Hungarians get roundly abused by one and all, not least by another of their former tormentors, Germany, for insisting on their national inviolability. Indeed, they have to suffer moral shame for harboring such aspirations at all, now equated with ethnic elitism, racism, nativism and the like.
Writing in the Guardian, Marcin Zaborowski adds more:
Several reasons help explain this reluctance [to accept the migrants], and most of them are missing from the coverage. First, central and eastern European states are already taking a huge number of both refugees and migrants from Ukraine. While many Poles work in British hospitals and cafes, in Poland’s service sector it is the Ukrainians who are doing many of the jobs. The same is true for other states of the region and few raise complaints.
Second, the decision of Angela Merkel to issue a broad welcome to the refugees is seen in central and eastern Europe as counter-productive and escalating the influx. This is why there is a reluctance to share in the implications of Berlin’s decision. Now as Germany is reintroducing checks on the border with Austria and as the entire concept of Europe with no internal borders is under threat, it seems that Berlin’s invitation to refugees was a little premature.
Third, central and eastern Europeans have little tradition of dealing with refugees from non-European cultures and lack the required infrastructure. The UK, France and Germany have for years been adjusting their systems – healthcare, education, language training – to assimilate migrants from all over the world. But for central and eastern Europe, which has no colonial past and is made up of mostly small and ethnically homogeneous nations, this is quite a new challenge.
And it’s not as if the Western Europeans have made such a great job of assimilating the vast number of immigrants they have taken in over the last half-century. “It didn’t work for us, now you try it” is not the most convincing argument I have ever heard.
So what now?
Kaylan:
The outcome… is not hard to foresee. As the EU’s dominant capitals demand that all constituent members fall in line with migrant-intake numbers and distribution, the Eastern bloc of populations from Poland to Romania will want to resist. They never invaded anybody [that could be debated]; they don’t have sins to expiate, but are dictated to by the guilt of others. Who knows what percentages of total population make for proper assimilation? Europe has shown no real talent in making that calculation up to now and the consequences are not pretty.
The intake will reach whatever arbitrary limit was dreamed up under global media pressure, at which point the same disorderly farce of recent weeks will recur — repeatedly — until the Union turns against itself for this and other reasons as it did three times last century. If you think the scenario too fanciful, consider the indigenous popular support for the Orbáns and Le Pens, and how we legitimize them by driving decent patriotic folk into their camp. Consider Vladimir Putin waiting in the wings, acting as their champion. Consider Europe’s past and its likely future.
That, I think overstates the current danger, but not the longer-term risks that the EU is running. Its irresponsible gamble on monetary union was an insult to democracy, an insult to economic logic and a gift both to rougher political parties and to Mr. Putin. There is every sign now that scrapping most internal border controls and embedding refugee rights within basic EU law was, like the euro, a disaster waiting to happen, and one that will have similar consequences.
Two strikes.
Nevertheless, despite what Melik (and other worriers, such as the Financial Times’ Gideon Rachman, paywalled, but worth the money) have to say, I suspect that the EU will muddle through this crisis as it has all the others before it.
Whether that is a good thing is an entirely different question.