Populist Pressure and Migration Policy in Europe
While Europe is facing critical issues such as the management of Brexit, a rogue ally across the Atlantic coming shortly for a visit that could go quite horribly, and the governance of the euro, the topic of the hour is migration - not because numbers are up (in fact they're down) but because the populist right is seizing the moment to press advantage. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is recently reelected and setting the pace for Central European populists and harder line conservatives across the continent, the leader of Italian's far-right Lega, Matteo Salvini, is an empowered interior minister, Bavaria's conservatives are trying to fend off the Alternative for Germany in upcoming state elections by threatening to bring down Angela Merkel, Austria's right-wing coalition is about to take over the European Council's rotating presidency. And all of these characters have a kindred spirit in the White House and notably good relations with the Kremlin.
My Brookings colleague Jessica Brandt and I wrote about the political developments and what's on the table for migration policy at the European Council summit this week:
Despite Salvini’s appalling rhetoric (“We need a mass cleansing, street by street, piazza by piazza, neighborhood by neighborhood,” he said in an interview last year that received renewed attention after he announced a “census” of the country’s Roma community), Italy needs a common European solution more than any other government present at the summit—with the possible exception of Germany.
Salvini may have a kindred spirit in Hungary’s vitriolic, anti-migrant Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, whose parliament just passed a series of laws that allow the government to imprison individuals and nongovernmental organizations for assisting undocumented migrants, but geography matters. And Hungary and its Visegrád Group partners—the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia—are largely responsible for the failure to reach agreement on a collective response within the bloc, rejecting EU proposals to implement resettlement quotas that would ease the burden on frontline countries including Italy... Ultimately, if Italy wants a refugee burden-sharing scheme, and the perpetuation of Europe’s system of open borders, Merkel, not Orbán, is its ally.
The fault lines on the issue are deep, and running between as well as within nations, they threaten the EU and the chancellor who has been its dominant leader for the past 13 years.
All the while, people are at risk. More than 34,000 migrants and refugees have died attempting to find a new home in Europe since the early 1990s. According to survivor accounts, more than 200 people drowned off the coast of Libya in several unrelated incidents just last week. As the stalemate between European countries deepens, almost 350 refugees and migrants remain stranded on two boats in the Mediterranean. The geopolitics of this week’s meeting are salient, but its human consequences are every bit as significant.