A turn toward resolving the Belarus-Poland crisis

Christian Jakob in the German paper Jungle World comments on the problem and weakness the EU displayed in the refugee stunt that Belarus pulled this year, Humanitär aus dem Weg räumen 18.11.2021.

It looks like the immediate crisis Belarus manufactured at the Polish border is being resolved now and some lives saved. (Thomas Mayer, Migranten in Belarus: Realpolitik an der Grenze Standard 18.11.2021)

Deutsche Welle reports, Belarus begins repatriation of hundreds of migrants 11/19/2021:



As DW also reports, the problems for the refugees isn't over yet, Humanitarian crisis deepens on Poland-Belarus border 11/20/2021:



It took Germany and France working out an arrangement with Russia and Belarus. The EU as such wasn't capable of resolving it.

The opening paragraph defines the problem, although it's muddled a bit by what seems to be a superficial understanding of the position of immigration expert Gerald Knaus:

Der österreichische Politikberater Gerald Knaus, bekannt als »Erfinder des EU-Türkei-Deals«, gilt vielen als Stimme der Vernunft in den heißlaufenden Asyldebatten. Dass der »Deal« für viele Flüchtlinge vor allem hieß, dass sie seit 2016 Syrien kaum mehr verlassen können, die EU durch die türkische Regierung unter Präsident Recep Tayyip Erdoğan erpressbar bleibt und sich auf den Ägäis-Inseln seither eine ausgewachsene humanitäre Katastrophe abspielt, hat am Urteil über Knaus nichts geändert.

[The Austrian political consultant Gerald Knaus, known as the "inventor of the EU-Turkey deal", is regarded by many as the voice of reason in the hot-running asylum debates. The fact that the "deal" for many refugees meant above all that they have hardly been able to leave Syria since 2016, that the EU remains subject to blackmail by the Turkish government under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and that a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe has been taking place on the Aegean islands since then has not changed Knaus' verdict. (my translation)]

This is a superficial take on Knaus' position. He conceived of the 2016 EU-Turkey deal as something that would only work properly if the EU then implemented a process by which significant numbers of refugees in Turkey have their asylum petitions considered by the EU and the successful ones accepted for residence in the EU.

The EU has not done that in the nearly six years since the EU-Turkey deal was concluded. And Knaus has been one of the most prominent critics of the EU's inaction and violations of law and human rights in its treatment of refugees in the years since. In his book Welche Grenzen brauchen wir? (2020), he discusses the concept behind the EU-Turkey deal and its antecedents. Christian Jakob is right that that there is a humanitarian crisis in the Greek Aegean islands with refugees. But that is not directly an effect of the EU-Turkey deal as such. It's another aspect of the EU's let-ignore-the-problem-and-hope-it-goes-away attitude toward the refugee crisis.

Knaus links on Twitter to Jakob's article and comments in a generous but critical way on it. Knaus calls attention to how widespread the mishandling of immigration issues is in the richer countries:

But the policies to which his criticism boils down are being implemented by any democracy, any country in the world. Currently, all 27 EU countries support Poland's policies. Under Biden, not Trump, just in September, 100,000 were deported from the United States without asylum. In the rest of the world, hardly any state grants asylum.

Like Jacob, a majority in Germany wants a humane policy without deaths. But he doesn't show a way to get there. This is more urgent today than ever.

Jakob, he points out, has advocated for an "open borders" solution.

But as far as it goes, this part of Jakob's critique is on point:

Denn für den westlichen Teil der EU ist die Flüchtlingssituation – wieder einmal – überaus verfahren: Kaum etwas fürchtet man mehr, als dass die Aufnahme der etwa vierstelligen Zahl festsitzender Geflüchteter als »Pull-Faktor«, also als Anreiz für weitere Flüchtlinge, diesen Weg zu nutzen, politisch ausgeschlachtet wird. Genau diese Botschaft aber senden Rechtspopulisten ständig, seit die vom belarussischen Diktator Alexander Lukaschenko produzierten Bilder an der östlichen Außengrenze täglich in den Medien zu sehen sind.

Dass die EU sich damit so erpressbar gemacht hat, ist ihre eigene Schuld. Bis heute hat sie keinen Plan, mit Ankommenden so um­zugehen, dass deren Rechte und die eigenen moralischen Maßstäbe gewahrt werden. Stattdessen hat auch die EU jahrelang die »irregu­läre Migration« als Bedrohung dämonisiert und jetzt auch noch die eskalierende Formulierung vom »hybriden Krieg« übernommen, die von der rechten autoritären Regierung Polens benutzt wird.

[For the western part of the EU, the refugee situation is – once again – extremely complicated: Hardly anything is feared more than that the admission of the approximately four-digit number of refugees as a "pull factor", i.e. as an incentive for more refugees to use this path, will be politically exploited. But this is exactly the message that right-wing populists are constantly sending since the images produced by Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko on the eastern external border can be seen daily in the media.

The fact that the EU has thus made itself so blackmailable is its own fault. To this day, it has no plan to deal with arrivals in such a way that their rights and their own moral standards are upheld. Instead, the EU has for years demonized "irregular migration" as a threat and has now adopted the escalating phrase of "hybrid war" used by Poland's right-wing authoritarian government.]

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, the most senior Catholic official in Austria, calls both Belaurus' conduct in using refugees this way as well as Poland's response in their brutal treatment of the refugees, "cynical and shameless." (Kardinal Schönborn über Belarus: "zynisch und schamlos" Heute 19.11.2021)

Gerald Knaus is one of the participants in the English podcast, Fortress Europe: Who gets to come in? BBC News 11/20/2021.

It would be nice to think that there would be some kind of meaningful negative repercussions for Poland from the EU for their criminal treatment of the refugees on their border. But I doubt it.