42 Europe The EconomistMarch 14th 2020
C
ompare and contrast. In 2015 thousands of irregular migrants
and asylum-seekers entered Hungary, en route to Germany.
Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orban, built a fence along the
country’s southern border to stop them. The European Commis-
sion chided Mr Orban. “We have only just torn down walls in Eu-
rope; we should not be putting them up,” tutted a flack for the
European Commission. Fast forward five years, and ugly scenes
erupted at the eu’s borders once again. Migrants trying to reach Eu-
rope on a dinghy were greeted by a Greek vessel, whose crew hit the
boat with sticks and fired warning shots at them. This time the
commission had a different response. “I thank Greece for being
our European aspida[shield] in these times,” said Ursula von der
Leyen, the president of the European Commission. What changed?
Two visions of the eucompeted during the migration crisis of
2015 and 2016, when more than 2m people flooded into the bloc. On
one side stood the humanitarians, who viewed the euas a norma-
tive power, a shining light on a hill. For them, the response was a
moral question with a simple answer: Willkommenskultur. On the
other side were the hardliners. Their argument for stiff, brutal
measures at the border was based on practicality (a state can only
feed and house so many refugees at once) and politics (voters will
kick out anyone who allows too large and sudden an influx, shar-
pish). After five years of wrestling, the humanitarians have been
routed. Now the hardliners reign supreme.
Brutality at the border is now a central feature of European mi-
gration policy. The misery is no coincidence. Anyone who makes it
to Greece faces dreadful conditions. On the Greek island of Lesbos
20,000 people are stuck in a camp designed for a seventh of that
number. The Greek government is building new facilities, but
these will come with strict rules on when asylum-seekers may
come and go. Anyone who makes it out of Greece is liable to be
beaten up by police at the Croatian border, who have been accused
of pummelling and robbing migrants before dumping them back
into neighbouring Bosnia. Deterrence trumps principle or, in
some cases, the law. (Greece has suspended asylum applications
for a month, arguing with some justification that the recent influx
of people is being orchestrated by the Turkish government, which
wants the euto give it more money.) Officials are eager to focus onwhat has become the eu’s guiding philosophy on migration: pour
décourager les autres.
Tactics that were once the demands of a nationalist fringe have
been adopted by mainstream governments. ngovessels operating
in the Mediterranean have been impounded and their crews ha-
rassed. Those who help people making the trip to Europe, by orga-
nising food and water along migratory routes, face charges of peo-
ple-smuggling. Mediterranean patrols have been scaled back lest
they act as a pull factor, encouraging people to brave choppy waters
in the hope of being rescued by the coastguard.
Morality still sometimes rears its head. European leaders are
not always comfortable with their choice. They grab policy fi-
gleaves to hide their shame whenever possible. Leaders from a
handful of states this month cooked up a scheme to relocate mi-
nors abandoned in miserable camps on Greek islands. Legally, ref-
ugee status has nothing to do with virtue. Being a refugee is not
about the content of your character but the misery of your circum-
stance. But politically it is far easier to move women and children
than 25-year-old single blokes, even if all are in danger.
Though some wrestle with the hardline turn, most officials are
happy to justify it. Ugly scenes at the frontier are a necessary evil
for convenience in the interior, goes one argument. Border control
is never pretty. A strong external border is required if Europeans
are to zip between Schengen countries with nary a flick of a pass-
port. The situation in 2015, when the eu’s frontier was patently not
secure, was untenable. At the moment, the main threat to Schen-
gen is coughing Italians or sneezing Germans. Poland has intro-
duced health checks for arrivals from Germany, and Slovenia has
closed some of its border-crossings from Italy. Freedom of move-
ment is fragile, even without a refugee crisis.
The most persuasive justification for all this is that hard bor-
ders may allow political space for softer measures, such as reset-
tling refugees directly from trouble spots. Unfortunately, that is
not how it seems to be working: only 65,000 refugees have been re-
settled in the eusince 2015. Another possible excuse is that a sec-
ond refugee crisis might help far-right parties win elections, just
as the first one helped trigger Brexit and the rise of Italy’s Matteo
Salvini. Consequently, governments seem happy to do nearly any-
thing to keep asylum-seekers at bay, even if that means aping the
parties they are determined to keep out of power.Good walls and good neighbours
A tough border is something with which all European leaders
agree. What happens if people breach it is another matter. Reforms
to eulaws on how to share responsibility for asylum-seekers and
irregular migrants have made little progress in four years. If Greece
fails to control the situation, as in 2015 and 2016, things could turn
ugly quickly. Other eucountries would have few qualms about
pushing on with plans for a much smaller Schengen area, consist-
ing mainly of rich, prosperous countries in the bloc’s north, far
from awkward external borders. A renewed crisis would poten-
tially be even more bitter than the first. Keeping people out by any
means necessary keeps this existential problem for the euat bay.
In 2015 Jean-Claude Juncker, then president of the commission,
declared that Europe was “the baker in [the Greek island of ] Kos
who gives away his bread to hungry and weary souls”. In 2020 Eu-
rope is the Greek ship attempting to capsize a dinghy full of people.
It is an ugly situation, which undermines the eu’s pretensions to
moral leadership. But to avoid another refugee crisis, this is a price
the eu’s leaders seem willing to pay. 7Charlemagne Pour décourager les autres
Europe hopes brutality at the border will keep refugees away