Europe starts putting up walls
“WE WILL manage,” said Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, in an attempt earlier this month to win public support for the refugees streaming into the country from the Middle East via the Balkans. Her phrase was both optimistic and familiar—it comes from the German version of the theme song of “Bob the Builder”, a children’s television series.
But within two weeks, on September 13th, Mrs Merkel performed a volte-face that stunned the European Union. Because Germany could not “manage” the influx of asylum-seekers and migrants, she reimposed controls along the border with Austria, accelerating an already galloping crisis. Austria, Slovakia and the Netherlands followed suit with controls of their own. They are said to be temporary and legal under the Schengen agreement that sets up free travel in most of the EU. And so they may be. But the crisis has a life of its own.
Hungary declared an emergency, sealed its border with Serbia with barbed-wire fences and began arresting those trying to cross. Police fired tear gas at them; 20 officers and many refugees were hurt. Growing numbers of refugees are now trapped on the Serbian side and have started evading the barrier by marching into Romania and Croatia, which are in the EU but not yet in Schengen. Hungary responded by saying it will extend the fence to its Romanian border. The cascade of events is likely to continue.
Mrs Merkel and her Austrian counterpart, Werner Faymann, meeting in Berlin on September 15th, called for an emergency EU summit. A day earlier the EU’s interior ministers had failed to reach agreement on a plan proposed by the European Commission for a binding quota system that would allocate 120,000 refugees among member states. The fiercest resistance came from eastern European countries. The plan could still be passed when the ministers next meet on September 22nd. But Germany’s interior minister, Thomas de Maizière, says that more pressure is needed. He proposes cutting EU subsidies to member states that refuse to take their share of refugees.
Disorder on the border
A potentially more effective way of exerting pressure involves extending German border controls to its eastern neighbours, Poland and the Czech Republic. The checks would not affect the legal rights of people seeking asylum in Germany (there or anywhere else) but merely move the burden of registering applicants from inland processing centres to the border. Yet controls would slow traffic and disrupt commerce, much of which benefits eastern Europe. Germany, ever sensitive about being seen as a bully, will think hard about increasing pressure overtly. Nonetheless, on September 7th Sigmar Gabriel, Germany’s vice-chancellor and economics minister, made a veiled threat. More border controls, he said, “would be a politically dramatic reverse for Europe, and I think a mental one too. But it would also be a heavy economic blow…especially for those states that are now saying: ‘We won’t participate.’”
For now, Mrs Merkel is busy shoring up domestic support. She became a heroine of sorts to refugees and many citizens on September 4th when she allowed trains to carry stranded refugees from Hungary through Austria into Germany. Germans bearing flowers and sweets turned out to welcome them. But Mrs Merkel, who is usually more cautious, had acted without bringing along some of her closest political partners. The conservative Christian Social Union governs the state of Bavaria, which borders Austria, and was outraged by Mrs Merkel’s welcoming stance, calling it a “grave mistake”. Other regional and municipal governments joined in the criticism. So did some EU countries, accusing Mrs Merkel of encouraging even more refugees to come.
Germany’s welcome mat could fray as the crisis grows. But Mrs Merkel is trying to retain her position as a champion of refugees. “If we now have to start apologising for showing a friendly face in an emergency, then this is not my country,” she said defiantly on September 15th.
She is haunted by the spectre that EU countries could fail in their greatest humanitarian challenge yet, thus betraying their own values. Border controls appear to negate perhaps the most visible achievement of European integration. Unsurprisingly many Eurosceptics are celebrating. “Schengen surely can’t survive now,” tweeted Nigel Farage, the leader of Britain’s UK Independence Party. “Bye-bye, Schengen,” gloated Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s even more virulently anti-EU National Front.