EU Breaks Up Cause of Refugees

The gap between East and West in the European Union has deepened. Especially because of migration and refugees. The main problem is lack of solidarity, Bernd Riegert thinks.

Forced quotas for receiving a number of asylum seekers, for which there has been contention at the EU summit, have been forgotten. The quota agreement from September 2015, as a measure for the distribution of shipments of refugees, has been long-term for two years. But time has passed and quotas have not been respected. While the continuation of this deadline is not anticipated. The European Court has dismissed complaints by Hungary and Slovakia against quotas. They too have been forced to take asylum seekers from Greece and Italy.

The EU Commission's only requirement now is for several thousand refugees identified for distribution to be distributed. The word is no longer about 120,000, but mostly about 9,000. But the Visegrad countries: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Chekhia refuse to accept asylum seekers. France, Austria and Spain, as well as some other countries, have accepted much less in the past two years than anticipated.

The quotas are dead, free of solidarity

EU Council President Donald Tusk is absolutely right when he says the system has not worked out and that EU countries are divided. This has been acknowledged by EU overloader for Migration Dimitris Avramoopoulos in September of this year. Figures and facts speak against quotas. Why Avramopolos attacks Tuscu as the European “” remains secret.

This is about a bitter quarrel between populist governments from Warsaw to Vienna on one side, as well as the governments of Germany, Italy, Greece and the European Commission on the other. This is not about quotas, it's about respect for principles. How much solidarity is there among EU countries? What values are respected?

The EU cannot allow member states such as Poland, Hungary and others to do so anymore. But on the other hand, they are not allowed to come under too much pressure either, because the response may be protection and opposition, promoting nationalist elements and claims that these countries are treated as second-class states in the EU.

The EU cannot allow member states, bearing the largest burden of asylum seekers, to remain lonely. Greece and Italy must be assisted. But violent quotas seem to be no more acceptable method. In the EU, only “external solidarity” functions, so protecting external borders, no matter what the consequences are for asylum seekers and migrants from Libya, for example. As people arriving in Europe have to be fully distributed, which is not working. The value system is not working here.

Last solution

The moral appeals against the Hungarian prime minister's xenophobia and friends at the Visegrad club will not help. But member states that finance the EU must seek internal solidarity. Countries accepting money, such as Poland, Hungary, Chekhia, and Slovakia, must be cut back on aid because this money should be given to Greece and Italy to accommodate refugees. Chancellor Merkel has threatened with such a possibility a year ago, but this has not helped so far.

Next year the problem can be solved, because the EU will begin negotiations on the new budget this year by 2020. Anyone who doesn't fulfill his obligations should notice this in the distribution of money. This is not some elegant tool, but perhaps the only one to force non-solid countries to fulfill their obligations. Political divisions in the EU will certainly not be resolved that way. The EU faces a very severe test.