A look back at the previous worst European refugee crisis since the Second Woirld War

The current influx of refugees to EU countries of millions of Ukrainian refugees is a crisis of this type unprecedented since the end of the Second World War.

But the 2015-16 refugee crisis that become a political crisis in which the far right and conservative parties exploited real and imaginary concerns over the refugees for political advantage. The arguments, resentments, and ideological twists of that crisis and its aftermath provide a starting point for seeing the current political reactions as they develop.

What became a major political crisis over refugees began in 2015, shortly after the Greek debt crisis was resolved in way that generated nationalistic tensions with the EU. So I've been looking back at some of the reporting and analysis on the 2015-16 crisis.

September 2015 is the point where the refugee crisis became what was generally seen also as a refugee crisis. The refugees then were largely coming from Syria, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan. As the refugee processing and centers and camps in Italy, larger numbers began arriving in other countries in Europe. In one of his most effective and malicious blows at democracy, the rule of law, and the coherence of the EU, Hungarian President Viktor Orbán organized a melodramatic moment in which he brought refugees from all over Hungary to the Austria border. Most of them wanted to get to Germany. This then provided news footage that the far right could use to promote a "Great Replacement" scare in which hordes of refugees were flooding Europe and in which national governments had "lost control of their borders."

Marei Pelzer wrote about the 2015 crisis in Flüchtlinge: Der inszenierte Notstand Blätter 2015-09 with particular reference to Germany. Reading this piece from 2019, a number of things caught my attention.

The 2015-16 arrivals were largely asylum-seekers. In 2022, the EU Commission invoked the Temporary Protection Directive, which means that Ukrainian refugees have the legal status of "displaced persons" for at least a year. There is still registration involved. But it reduces the initial legal complications for new arrivals compared to those officially designated as "refugees/asylum-seekers."

The complaint that huge numbers of refugees are abusing the laws and faking their asylum eligibility won't be entirely missing in 2022. But at least they will have to reformulated a bit as far-right groups adapt them to the Ukrainians.

There were violent attacks on refugee residences. "Right-wing thugs are blatantly trying to spread fear and terror among migrants and intimidate their political opponents," wrote Pelzer.

There was a lot of conversation and legal maneuvering around attempts to stigmatize categories of refugees as less deserving or genuine than others. Senior German politicians were discussing creating special refugee camps, which Pelzer called "a discriminatory and stigmatizing Praxis."

Every time an unexpected crisis occurs, one of the easiest and safest complains to make is that the government was not adequately prepared for it. And that was so in 2015, as well. Pelzer wrote:

The current state of emergency could have been avoided by acting with foresight. It is not the sheer number of refugees that poses challenges for local administrations – but years of mis-planning by federal policy. Although the increase in the number of refugees was foreseeable for a long time, the Grand Coalition [Angela Merkel’s government at the time] reacted far too late. For this reason, emergency shelters, tent cities and other temporary arrangements for asylum seekers are now being built ad hoc in many places.

She also observes that administrative procedures like processing of asylum requests also showed seriously inadequate preparation.

In the ugly competition among EU countries to make taking care of refugees somebody else's problem, there's a cynical logic in not being adequately prepared for refugee emergencies. A popular talking point among anti-immigrant politicians is what they call the "pull effect." The idea is that asylum-seekers know they count on safety, decent handling, and efficient processing of asylum claims, that will make more people want to come to Europe and apply for asylum. Such a "pull effect" has never been established on a factual basis. The argument is even applied in deadly ways as a reason to not rescue refugees in life-threatening situations in the Mediterranean and to improve appalling living conditions and health dangers in refugee camps.

(All German translation in this post are mine.)