September 4, 2015 7:33 pm
EU refugee crisis: End of an ideal
Alex Barker, Andrew Byrne and Jeevan Vasagar
Europe’s struggle to deal with the arrival of thousands of non-EU citizens raises questions
The scene at Bicske railway station in Hungary, where a train full of migrants refused to disembark and travel to a refugee processing centre
The Greek island of Kos is one of the epicentres for the arrival of migrants from Turkey, who then make their way north through Greece to Macedonia
“Do you think we want to remain here, to be humiliated like this?” says Marwan, a 19-year-old from Raqqa in Syria whose attempt to reach Germany was halted in Bicske. “I just want to find my family but these people will not let me,” he says, gesturing at police.
There was cruel irony in the pictures adorning that train: soaring doves, severed barbed wire, children skipping through fields. It commemorated the moment in 1989 that Hungary allowed the first of more than 50,000 East Germans to escape communism under the guise of an innocent “pan-European picnic”. The Austro-Hungarian border jamboree was the beginning of the end of the cold war.
From that breach of the Iron Curtain emerged the most liberal era in European travel since the start of the first world war. The result is Schengen, a passport-free travel area covering 26 countries, a land where internal border posts have morphed into petrol stations and chocolate shops. One of the signature achievements of half a century of European integration, it now stands in mortal danger, brought low by a crisis testing European solidarity to the limit.
In some ways it was all too foreseeable. When agreed in 1985, Schengen countries approved rules on car vignettes and lorry driver rest breaks, but set aside asylum. It remains an incomplete system, basically split into 26 national regimes that vary in leniency.
In a 2012 think-tank report Hugo Brady, now an aide to European Council president Donald Tusk, called on European leaders to “snuff the fuse” lit under the Schengen endeavour.
“Without more assertive political action and a fair amount of luck,” he wrote for the Centre for European Reform, “the fragile confidence that allows 26 European countries to share a single border and visa policy could collapse.” In terms of trust, it duly has.
Responding with border control masquerading as traffic checks, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Germany this week pushed open-border Schengen principles to their limit. The Schengen code is flexible enough to cope with isolated episodes. But with asylum rules all but unenforceable, Miroslav Lajcak, Slovak foreign minister, declared the free travel zone had “de facto fallen apart”.
Senior officials despair at yet another “depressingly familiar” EU cataclysm: a bold policy ideal introduced prematurely, its rules unevenly applied and its institutions weak; a systemic crisis bringing the whole political construct to the brink of collapse; feuding across the bloc; and Germany pushed to the fore, feeling compelled to make others bend to its will. What befell the euro, now seizes Schengen, endangering another bastion of European integration.
Once again under strain is Europe’s spirit of solidarity. This time the divide is broadly east-west. As Berlin has waived rules, deployed its diplomatic clout and sought a collective solution for the 800,000 asylum seekers expected in Germany this year — an unprecedented number — eastern Europe has entered a defensive crouch, hardened by anti-immigrant politics. Slovakia said it would take 200 refugees — but only Christians.
Asked about the symbolism of Hungary cutting down barbed wire in 1989, and erecting another barrier to stop refugees today, Viktor Orban, the country’s authoritarian premier, snipped: “The first fence . . . was against us. This one is for us. That is the difference.”
He added: “I think we have a right to decide that we don’t want to have a large number of Muslim people in our country,” and elaborated on a theme of Europe’s “Christian” civilisation being under threat.
Merkel takes a stand
Such sentiments have been sharply rebuked by Angela Merkel, German chancellor, who cast the crisis as a test of the entire European project’s values. “If Europe fails on the question of refugees — if the close link with universal civil rights is broken — then it won’t be the Europe we wished for,” she said. The comment provoked questions over whether free cross-border movement can be sustained without a common acceptance of a multicultural society.
History explains part of this divide. Mark Mazower, professor of history at Columbia University, notes that while Europe as a whole went through a process of “ethnic purification” through the 20th century, only in the west did this go into reverse after 1960 through an inflow of migrant labour.
“Eastern Europe did not partake in that. Ethnic homogenisation happened much more suddenly and dramatically and was not reversed at all until now,” he says. “This debate has not really started in eastern Europe. Western and eastern Europe are having two conversations; they are talking past each other.”
Most fraught has been the emotional fight over refugee quotas, the German-backed European Commission solution to the crisis. Earlier this year eastern Europe balked at voluntarily divvying up 40,000 refugees; next week Jean-Claude Juncker, Commission president, will raise that to 160,000 — and insist it is mandatory and automatic. Eastern European leaders yesterday reiterated their opposition to mandatory quotas. But behind the commission’s push is Ms Merkel’s threat: share the burden or risk the disintegration of Schengen.
One eastern European minister fumed that Merkel had “no right” to go so far to force the issue. “How dare she threaten us with that?” the minister said. Yet it has had the desired effect.
Along with forceful German diplomacy, footage of refugees crammed in Keleti station evoked painful memories of communism. “People here remember what it is like to be told that they cannot board a train, they have no papers, they cannot go west, they cannot leave,” says one Polish diplomat, comparing the scenes with the 1989 east German exodus. “It made the crisis more real.”
A Munich welcome
Stepping off the train from Budapest a bearded man murmured a question to a group of German police dressed in baggy fatigues. “München,” a German officer told the Syrian man, pointing at the ground. “Hier ist München.” Almost 3,500 refugees arrived at Munich’s main station on Monday and Tuesday, straining the authorities’ ability to cope.
Across Germany, regional governments are expanding reception centres. Berlin plans to convert hangars at the disused Tempelhof airport into shelters.
The offerings have sometimes been impractical: a gift of fresh chicken was impossible to store and high heels were unsuitable for footsore refugees. But the warmth of the welcome has delighted the migrants. “They lit up,” says volunteer Vaniessa Rashid.
When Germany last received large numbers of refugees in the early 1990s, the economy was in recession and the newcomers were greeted by violent xenophobic riots. This time, the country is prospering. “Right now things are going so well for us,” says Lukas, a student volunteer at the train station. “We need to ask ourselves: how would we want to be treated if we were in this situation?”
Not all share this view. Since the start of the year, there have been more than 300 attacks on asylum seeker accommodation. But the rightwing movements that might make hay from such discontent are themselves in disarray.
“After the second world war the Germans were also refugees,” says Annabel Herberger, an executive assistant who arrived at the station with a bundle of prepaid sim cards. “Europe is doing nothing, so I felt that someone must do something. This is a drop in the ocean,” she says, “but many drops add up.”
Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Warsaw and Jim Brunsden in Brussels
For the hundreds camped there, the latch being lifted sounded like the opening of a cell door. Through the heavy wrought-iron gates of Budapest’s Keleti station they found a train emblazoned with German flags. Cheers rang out. The Syrian refugees thought their liberator had arrived. “Germany, Germany,” they cried.
Yet this was no rescue mission. The passengers were taken not to Germany but 40km to the town of Bicske, where Hungarian police waited to transfer them to an overcrowded refugee camp. In the desperate scenes that followed, hope collided with the reality of the EU’s dysfunctional asylum system. A migration crisis from Greek shores had hit home hard in central Europe.
“Do you think we want to remain here, to be humiliated like this?” says Marwan, a 19-year-old from Raqqa in Syria whose attempt to reach Germany was halted in Bicske. “I just want to find my family but these people will not let me,” he says, gesturing at police.
There was cruel irony in the pictures adorning that train: soaring doves, severed barbed wire, children skipping through fields. It commemorated the moment in 1989 that Hungary allowed the first of more than 50,000 East Germans to escape communism under the guise of an innocent “pan-European picnic”. The Austro-Hungarian border jamboree was the beginning of the end of the cold war.
From that breach of the Iron Curtain emerged the most liberal era in European travel since the start of the first world war. The result is Schengen, a passport-free travel area covering 26 countries, a land where internal border posts have morphed into petrol stations and chocolate shops. One of the signature achievements of half a century of European integration, it now stands in mortal danger, brought low by a crisis testing European solidarity to the limit.
This has been a miserable summer for European ideals. From a bloc founded in the pursuit of peace have emerged frightful images of refugees suffocating on motorway lay-bys, squalid makeshift camps, lifeless toddlers washed ashore, burning asylum centres, serial numbers penned on forearms, the sight of black-clad police pepper spraying families fleeing war. Inundated with asylum seekers, yet lacking the central functions to cope, Europe is divided over what to do. Higher walls? Welcome mats? Is this a national problem or should the burden be shared?
Clear faultlines
In a 2012 think-tank report Hugo Brady, now an aide to European Council president Donald Tusk, called on European leaders to “snuff the fuse” lit under the Schengen endeavour.
“Without more assertive political action and a fair amount of luck,” he wrote for the Centre for European Reform, “the fragile confidence that allows 26 European countries to share a single border and visa policy could collapse.” In terms of trust, it duly has.
Responding with border control masquerading as traffic checks, Austria, Hungary, Italy and Germany this week pushed open-border Schengen principles to their limit. The Schengen code is flexible enough to cope with isolated episodes. But with asylum rules all but unenforceable, Miroslav Lajcak, Slovak foreign minister, declared the free travel zone had “de facto fallen apart”.
Senior officials despair at yet another “depressingly familiar” EU cataclysm: a bold policy ideal introduced prematurely, its rules unevenly applied and its institutions weak; a systemic crisis bringing the whole political construct to the brink of collapse; feuding across the bloc; and Germany pushed to the fore, feeling compelled to make others bend to its will. What befell the euro, now seizes Schengen, endangering another bastion of European integration.
Once again under strain is Europe’s spirit of solidarity. This time the divide is broadly east-west. As Berlin has waived rules, deployed its diplomatic clout and sought a collective solution for the 800,000 asylum seekers expected in Germany this year — an unprecedented number — eastern Europe has entered a defensive crouch, hardened by anti-immigrant politics. Slovakia said it would take 200 refugees — but only Christians.
Asked about the symbolism of Hungary cutting down barbed wire in 1989, and erecting another barrier to stop refugees today, Viktor Orban, the country’s authoritarian premier, snipped: “The first fence . . . was against us. This one is for us. That is the difference.”
He added: “I think we have a right to decide that we don’t want to have a large number of Muslim people in our country,” and elaborated on a theme of Europe’s “Christian” civilisation being under threat.
Merkel takes a stand
Such sentiments have been sharply rebuked by Angela Merkel, German chancellor, who cast the crisis as a test of the entire European project’s values. “If Europe fails on the question of refugees — if the close link with universal civil rights is broken — then it won’t be the Europe we wished for,” she said. The comment provoked questions over whether free cross-border movement can be sustained without a common acceptance of a multicultural society.
History explains part of this divide. Mark Mazower, professor of history at Columbia University, notes that while Europe as a whole went through a process of “ethnic purification” through the 20th century, only in the west did this go into reverse after 1960 through an inflow of migrant labour.
“Eastern Europe did not partake in that. Ethnic homogenisation happened much more suddenly and dramatically and was not reversed at all until now,” he says. “This debate has not really started in eastern Europe. Western and eastern Europe are having two conversations; they are talking past each other.”
Most fraught has been the emotional fight over refugee quotas, the German-backed European Commission solution to the crisis. Earlier this year eastern Europe balked at voluntarily divvying up 40,000 refugees; next week Jean-Claude Juncker, Commission president, will raise that to 160,000 — and insist it is mandatory and automatic. Eastern European leaders yesterday reiterated their opposition to mandatory quotas. But behind the commission’s push is Ms Merkel’s threat: share the burden or risk the disintegration of Schengen.
One eastern European minister fumed that Merkel had “no right” to go so far to force the issue. “How dare she threaten us with that?” the minister said. Yet it has had the desired effect.
Just as criticism has forced Britain to ease its resistance to taking more Syrian refugees, Poland — despite opposing mandatory quotas — has softened its rhetoric and increased its intake.
A Munich welcome
Stepping off the train from Budapest a bearded man murmured a question to a group of German police dressed in baggy fatigues. “München,” a German officer told the Syrian man, pointing at the ground. “Hier ist München.” Almost 3,500 refugees arrived at Munich’s main station on Monday and Tuesday, straining the authorities’ ability to cope.
Across Germany, regional governments are expanding reception centres. Berlin plans to convert hangars at the disused Tempelhof airport into shelters.
The episode has become a case study in Germany’s ascendancy in Europe. Yet by contrast to the eurozone crisis, in this case Berlin is winning more plaudits than barbs. Ms Merkel has said the refugee situation gave Germany a chance to refashion its image as a “land of hope and opportunities”.
In Munich, the public has overwhelmed the authorities with its generosity. At one point they pleaded for the donations to stop.
When Germany last received large numbers of refugees in the early 1990s, the economy was in recession and the newcomers were greeted by violent xenophobic riots. This time, the country is prospering. “Right now things are going so well for us,” says Lukas, a student volunteer at the train station. “We need to ask ourselves: how would we want to be treated if we were in this situation?”
Not all share this view. Since the start of the year, there have been more than 300 attacks on asylum seeker accommodation. But the rightwing movements that might make hay from such discontent are themselves in disarray.
Alternative für Deutschland, an anti-euro party which morphed into populist conservatism, is weakened by infighting while numbers at the Pegida “anti-Islamisation” marches in Dresden have shrunk. History plays a part.
Additional reporting by Henry Foy in Warsaw and Jim Brunsden in Brussels
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