Refugee crisisFencing off the east: how the refugee crisis is dividing the European Union
Two very different responses to the crisis are emerging on each side of Europe. The West might be failing to handle the crisis well but the east is simply rejecting any role in it. Resentment is building on both sides and is threatening European unity. Racism of course exists in Western Europe, but the strength of feeling in eastern and central Europe, among politicians as well as the general public, has caused alarm. Western Europeans are disgusted by how refugees are being treated in the east, which is even beginning to cause diplomatic tension. This crisis has raised a lot of questions about what it means to be European, nowhere more so than in the east of the continent. Fissures are appearing under the strain and if common cultural ground can’t be found soon, this could signal an end to the union.
Having finished construction of a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia, Hungary now plans to extend it to Romania. Tampering with the fence is punishable with prison or deportation.
These are its latest moves in a stand-off between the thousands of migrants trying to reach Europe through Hungarian territory.
Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has said that this is a “German problem,” not a “European problem,” while leaders in western Europe talk about a shared responsibility.
Two very different responses to the crisis are emerging on each side of Europe. The West might be failing to handle the crisis well but the east is simply rejecting any role in it. Resentment is building on both sides and is threatening European unity.
United in defiance
The leaders of the four so-called Visegrad countries — the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia — met in Prague in the first week of September to discuss the refugee crisis. There, they agreed to emphatically reject Angela Merkel’s call for a more even distribution of refugees and immigrants across the European Union.
Czech prime minister Bohuslav Sobotka and his Slovak counterpart Robert Fico took the message to Austrian chancellor Werner Faymann a few days later at a meeting in Bratislava. Fico went further than Sobotka, saying that Slovakia would only accept refugees who would be willing to integrate fully into Slovak society. And since there are few such people, he suggested, there is no point in introducing compulsory quotas.
This is an argument often repeated by central European politicians. Never mind that it is somewhat hypocritical, given that most of the refugees have already sensed the hostility towards them in these countries and are not seeking to stay.
Two Europes
For years, the post-communist countries of central and eastern Europe were left to their own devices. Western Europe took not even the slightest notice of what was actually going on in the region — culturally or politically. This was true even after the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia joined the EU in 2004.
Now, as this continent-wide crisis deepens, people are beginning to realize (with some surprise) that the post-communist societies of central and eastern Europe have been developing differently to the West. It is starting to look like the presumed unity of values of the twenty-eight countries of the European Union may have been a mirage.
