Tensions
over migration: Barbed rhetoric
Nationalist
and anti-immigrant sentiment in central and eastern European
countries are threatening the spirit of EU unity
Henry Foy and Neil
Buckley
November 26, 2015
7:54 pm
The assault rifles
of the Paris terror attacks had fallen silent only hours earlier when
Konrad Szymanski saw an opportunity. Poland’s new minister for
Europe had not even been sworn in, but he gave the rest of the EU a
sense of what to expect from its new rightwing government.
“The attacks
indicate the need for an even deeper revision of the European policy
on the migration crisis,” he wrote in an opinion piece published
while other leaders across Europe were expressing solidarity with
France.
He added that Poland
saw “no political possibility of executing” the EU’s plan to
distribute refugees from Syria and other war-torn countries among its
members.
That his Law and
Justice party, which won a landslide majority in last month’s
election, is opposed to Poland accepting migrants is no revelation.
But for Warsaw’s most senior negotiator in Brussels to use the
Paris attacks as a means of attacking the EU migration policy shocked
many across the continent.
It crystallised
concerns, too, that after Hungary swung to the right in 2010 with the
election of the firebrand populist Viktor Orban, more of central
Europe was in danger of following suit.
It has been 11 years
since the most ambitious expansion in EU history saw 10 countries —
eight from the former communist bloc — join the union in a move
widely seen as ending Europe’s decades-long division.
Although many were
hit hard by the global financial crisis, billions of euros of EU aid
have helped the new eastern members’ economies — especially the
so-called Visegrad Four of Poland, Slovakia, Czech Republic and
Hungary — to perform better overall than western Europe over the
past decade.
The new members have
largely bought into the EU’s liberalisation agenda, despite
isolated clashes on climate change and social policies. But today,
the rise of nationalism and euroscepticism across central Europe,
fuelled by the migrant crisis and stoked by populist leaders, is
challenging the unity of the European project. It is raising
questions over the liberal orthodoxy that has underpinned much of the
EU’s core message.
Speed read
Constitutional
shake-up Moves by the new rightwing Polish government echo some of
Orban’s changes in Hungary
In search of a
majority The ruling party in Slovakia has turned to anti-migrant
rhetoric ahead of an election in March
Eastern bloc vote
The ‘Visegrad’ group often represents the views of the Baltic
states as well as Romania and Bulgaria
Compared with the
rest of the EU, central Europe has small immigrant populations, with
few Muslims. It is also more socially conservative, partly a legacy
of decades of Soviet-imposed communism. Though these are not dominant
characteristics, they can be exploited by opportunistic politicians.
Of the Visegrad
Four, only Hungary is on the migrant route carrying tens of thousands
of people a day from Syria, Afghanistan and north Africa towards
Germany and beyond.
But some regional
leaders have whipped up public anxiety over the possible impact of a
migratory wave that has seen more than 750,000 migrants arrive in
Europe this year alone. The result is anger at what many perceive to
be a heavy-handed response by the EU, creating an east-versus-west,
us-versus-them discourse. It amounts to the largest outbreak of
public euroscepticism in the region’s history.
The dynamic in
Europe was until recently the “fiscally sensible north versus the
profligate south”, says a senior diplomat from the region. “Now
it is the altruistic west against the xenophobic east. Our biggest
danger is to fall into this trap and follow the nationalist, populist
rhetoric.”
The EU’s first
taste of such rhetoric in central Europe came with the 2010 election
of Mr Orban and his Fidesz party in Hungary. The one-time student
dissident served a term as premier in 1998-2002. But the implosion of
the Socialist government — under whose rule Hungary had become the
first central European state to need a bailout from the International
Monetary Fund during the financial crisis — swept Fidesz back to
power. It also left the far-right Jobbik party as his main
opposition.
Mr Orban used his
two-thirds majority to push through a controversial media law, which
critics said muzzled opposition voices, and a new constitution that
entrenched his party’s power.
Though he and his
party have faced criticism over treatment of the Roma minority and
for alleged anti-semitism — which they deny — Mr Orban only
latched on to the immigration issue this year. As Hungary found
itself on the transit route during the spring for thousands of
Kosovans heading towards Austria and Germany, Mr Orban launched a
campaign warning migrants against “taking Hungarians’ jobs”. He
also sent letters to Hungarians, seeking their views on immigration,
including potential links between migrants and terrorism.
Fears of ‘Fortress
Europe’
The Kosovan
experience left Mr Orban in a strong position once Hungary found
hundreds of thousands of Middle Eastern migrants trekking across the
country this summer. Insisting he was defending the EU’s Schengen
zone — the passport-free travel area of which Hungary is a member —
Mr Orban erected a 175km razor-wire fence at the Serbia border in
September and passed laws making it almost impossible for refugees to
enter. He later did the same at the Croatian border.
Mr Orban became the
first European leader to adopt “clash of civilisations” rhetoric,
warning that Muslims in EU countries were living in non-integrated,
“parallel” communities. “If we let the Muslims into the
continent to compete with us, they will outnumber us. It’s
mathematics,” he said in September.
Peter Kreko,
director of Political Capital, a Budapest consultancy, says Mr
Orban’s stance was aimed at diverting attention from corruption
allegations surrounding some associates and reversing gains for the
Jobbik party. Polls suggest this strategy has worked.
But, he says, Mr
Orban is also trying to present himself as a “visionary”, adding:
“He really expects that he will have a leading role in Europe.”
To western Europe’s
alarm, the Orban rhetoric has started to spread. Jaroslaw Kaczynski,
leader of the Law and Justice party and Poland’s most powerful
politician, has vowed the country will not accept more refugees under
the EU’s sharing scheme. He has warned that immigrants into Europe
could spread “parasites and disease”.
Robert Fico,
Slovakia’s prime minister, has said migrants pose a security risk
to Europe, and threatened to pull his country out of the EU rather
than accept refugees under the quota plan. And in the Czech Republic,
president Milos Zeman has supported the far-right Bloc Against Islam,
which calls for all Muslims to be evicted from the country. Andrej
Babis, deputy prime minister, has demanded that Europe shut its
borders and use military force to prevent more immigration.
In depth
Europe’s migration
crisis
Syrian refugees
arrive on the shores of the Greek island of Lesbos after crossing the
Aegean Sea from Turkey on a inflatable dinghy on September 11, 2015.
The EU unveiled plans to take 160,000 refugees from overstretched
border states, as the United States said it would accept more Syrians
to ease the pressure from the worst migration crisis since World War
II. AFP PHOTO / ANGELOS TZORTZINIS (Photo credit should read ANGELOS
TZORTZINIS/AFP/Getty Images)
The EU is struggling
to respond to a surge of desperate migrants that has resulted in
thousands of deaths since the beginning of the year
Vladimir Handl, of
the Institute of International Relations in Prague, warns that
parties in the region are not offering political leadership but
instead “follow the public mood defined by populists, or are
populists themselves”.
“The Visegrad
group may turn into a platform for co-ordinated populist opposition
to the European mainstream in the refugee issue,” Prof Handl adds.
That would be bad
news for the EU project. Poland, with the EU’s sixth-largest
economy and population, has as many votes in the European Council,
the EU’s decision-making body, as Italy and Spain. Slovakia will
assume the bloc’s rotating presidency in the second half of 2016.
The Visegrad Group
has historically also represented the views of the Baltic states,
Romania and Bulgaria. Together, they constitute a group within
touching distance of a blocking veto on all council decisions. While
Brussels can tolerate and contain one Mr Orban, it will struggle to
handle half a dozen.
Warsaw impact
Three days before Mr
Szymanski’s missive, more than 50,000 Poles marched through the
centre of Warsaw on a nationalist, anti-EU march. Chants comparing
Brussels with Soviet Moscow rang out alongside shouts of “No Islam,
no atheists, a Poland for Catholics”. Through a fog of white smoke
billowing from bright red flares held aloft by men in black jackets
and balaclavas, a banner bore the march’s slogan “Poland for
Poles and Poles for Poland”.
The marchers remain
a fringe group, but elements of their rhetoric are seeping into
central Europe’s political discourse. In Slovakia, Mr Fico has
ratcheted up his anti-immigrant language ahead of a general election
in March. His party changed its slogan from “We work for the
people” to “We protect Slovakia”, and its lead in the polls has
risen since.
One Slovak diplomat
describes his country’s prime minister as “Orban-lite”. He said
Mr Fico’s nationalist tack resulted from his desire not to lose
votes to more extremist parties.
“We will have
rhetoric like this . . . until the election,” the diplomat
says. “Fico knows hardening his position could mean the difference
between a victory and an outright majority. After that we will have
to wait and see.”
Polls back up Mr
Fico’s strategy. Only 2 per cent of Slovaks think refugees should
be given permanent asylum in the country, a survey in October found.
“He’s not a
eurosceptic, he’s just a pragmatist. And right now, that [means]
euroscepticism,” says a second senior Slovak foreign policy
official, who declined to be identified. “It is straight out of the
Orban playbook.”
Mr Kaczynski has
played on similar public suspicions, which polls suggest helped his
party win last month’s general election with a 14 per cent margin
and end eight years in power for the pro-EU, liberal Civic Platform
party.
On Wednesday, Mr
Kaczynski’s party used its majority to pass legislation designed to
alter the make-up of the constitutional court by dismissing judges
not chosen by him, and also taking control of the body designed to
hold parliament to account. The moves echo some of Mr Orban’s
constitutional changes. Poland’s opposition condemned the move as a
“coup”, while Nils Muiznieks, the Council of Europe’s human
rights commissioner, says it “undermines the rule of law”.
In a symbolic move,
the Kaczynski administration announced that the EU flag would be
removed from the prime minister’s weekly press conferences. And he
has indicated that he will reverse the support for Brussels’
relocation plan given by the previous government. His new foreign
minister has suggested that Syrian refugees should be armed and sent
back to fight in the civil war, rather than “sip coffee” in
Europe.
Fearing a public
outcry if it supported the EU’s plan to divide more than 100,000
migrants between member states, Prague sided with Bratislava and
Budapest in voting against the measures in September. “The
situation was that we were either with Orban or we were with the
Germans,” says a senior Czech foreign ministry official. “And the
public were with Orban, so we had no choice.”
That decision has
already hit relations with western member states, led by Germany,
which perceived the refusal as a lack of solidarity from countries
the EU has heavily supported economically.
Some see warning
signs. Andrej Kiska, Slovakia’s liberal president, recently urged
fellow politicians to avoid “reviving the ghosts of the past”
that risk dividing Europe. “It would be against our strategic
interest, against our common sense to turn central Europe into some
troublemaking bloc inside the EU, allied by a trivial, selfish and
short-sighted ‘blame-it-on-Brussels’ political agenda,” he
says.
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário