Germany’s border clampdown threatens the entire European project
No wonder Viktor Orbán and Geert Wilders are cheering. Olaf Scholz is helping them to reshape the EU as they want it
The far right across Europe used to dream of seeing their countries leave the European Union. In France, they called for a Frexit; in Germany, it was Dexit.
But recently these calls have quietened. The reason is not that
far-right parties have become enamoured of the EU, but rather they now
understand that instead of quitting, they can reshape the EU into a
collection of “strong” nation states that will each enact their own
rightwing anti-migration agenda.
As Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally (RN) in France, recently remarked in explaining why his party no longer called for France to quit the EU: “You don’t leave the table when you are winning the game.”
That
the far right is being allowed to “win the game” is abundantly clear in
Germany, where the governing coalition has announced systematic border controls,
which will come into force on 16 September. Tighter checks at all of
Germany’s nine land borders are an attempt by the government to curb
immigration by preventing people, especially asylum seekers who have
already crossed other EU states, from entering Germany.
This opens the way for serious human rights violations and racial profiling. Germany’s Council for Migration warns that the plan risks violating EU law.
The
border checks are due to be in place for an initial six months. They
were announced amid a febrile debate about what the leader of the
conservative opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) called a “national emergency”
after a Syrian asylum seeker who, under EU asylum regulations, should
have been returned from Germany to Bulgaria, was charged with a fatal
killing in Solingen. Since the far-right, anti-migration Alternative für
Deutschland’s (AfD’s) electoral success in Thuringia and Saxony on 1
September, the debate has reached boiling point.
The German government is on a dangerous path. The
country holds a central position in the EU and is its largest economy,
meaning that this plan, which goes against one of the central tenets of
the EU, threatens to undermine the European project.
A
cornerstone of that project was the ambition to make national borders
disappear by creating the passport-free Schengen area, which now
includes 25 of the 27 EU member states. It was one of the reasons why
the EU received the Nobel peace prize in 2012 – although even then,
thousands of migrants were dying at the EU’s external borders every
year. At the time, a representative of the union declared:
“Over the past 60 years, the European project has shown that it is
possible for peoples and nations to come together across borders. That
it is possible to overcome the differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’.”
No wonder the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk,
has publicly criticised Germany’s unilateral plan as a systematic
suspension of Schengen and a contravention of European law. Austria has
also said it is not prepared to receive any migrants turned back from
the border with Germany, and other countries are likely to concur.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz,
claimed on Wednesday that the government had already “achieved a great
turnaround in reducing irregular migration”. But Scholz’s plan risks
causing a chain reaction throughout Europe that could lead to the
unravelling of the “post-national” idea itself. In the Netherlands,
Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Freedom party, which is now part
of the government, has already asked: “If Germany can do it, why can’t we?”, adding: “As far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better.”
Other parties on the far right are celebrating.
By caving in to anti-migration sentiment, supposedly “centrist”
political parties are doing the far right’s bidding and legitimising its
vision of a Europe with hardening borders. It is no great surprise that
Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, congratulated Scholz, tweeting: “@Bundeskanzler, welcome to the club! #StopMigration.”
German asylum statistics show that the number of asylum applications is actually decreasing this year.
However, the three parties of the ruling coalition want to regain lost
electoral support by joining with the far and centre right. Both the AfD
and the CDU are aggressively pushing for repressive migration policies.
Police chiefs have said they may lack capacity to
carry out the new border checks. But whether Germany can actually
control its 3,700km of frontiers is beside the point. By seeking to pass
the measures ahead of a third state election in Brandenburg on 22 September,
the coalition is signalling to voters that it is prepared to act
decisively to address what CDU leaders hyperbolically call a “loss of control” at Germany’s borders.
The
German government’s belief that it can tackle migration and regain
electoral support by ramping up border controls is misguided. The truth
is, migration will continue in a world that fails to address the reasons
why people flee their countries: wars and conflict, political
persecution and oppression, the climate catastrophe and unsustainable
forms of resource exploitation.
Besides stoking up racist resentment in society and undermining the
rights of vulnerable groups, the German government risks putting the EU
itself in jeopardy. The very idea of a political community that
enshrines the right to free movement across borders is crumbling before
our eyes. And it is not migrants who are to blame.
