He points to a fact that is discouraging to anyone hoping the EU could develop a more constructive immigration and refugee policy than just paying Turkey for years on end to hold 3.5 million or more refugees. That was a constructive and sensible agreement when Angela Merkel first negotiated it in 2016. But instead of using the ensuring half-decade to come up with a broader and practical policy, the EU has just punted.
(I often use somewhat dismissive language in talking about EU immigration and refugee policy. I don't mean to imply that it's an easy problem, particularly in cases where wars or their aftermaths suddenly generate a surge of refugees. My main criticism is that the approach of mainstream parties is often a head-in-the-sand posture while the xenophobic demagogues too often drive the public conversation and official policy.)
Rightwing xenophobic populists still drive the EU politics of immigration and refugees. If the center-left and center-right parties just ape the xenophobes in their immigration politics as they have tended to do, it will be hard to develop better alternatives. Unless mainstream politicians can do a much better political vocabulary for talking about the real issues involved, the far right nationalists will continue to drive the narrative. And, while waiting for the next actual refugee crisis, diplomatically kiss Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan's behind. Because he can unleash a 2015-style refugee inflow to the EU in a matter of days under the current arrangements.
And Mamedov explains that it makes a pragmatic approach to the new Taliban government particularly difficult for the EU:
Human rights activists suspect that such an about-face on the Taliban is mainly due to concerns about “migratory flows” that the crisis in Afghanistan would unleash and ultimately impact the EU, much the way the Syrian refugee crisis did in 2015. Indeed, one day after the foreign ministers met, their colleagues responsible for home and justice affairs followed suit.
The statement produced by the European Commission as a result of that meeting is a painstakingly negotiated compromise. On the one hand, it sets out to protect the borders from the “migratory pressures;” on the other, it acknowledges that the EU cannot completely close itself off to Afghans seeking refuge and should use resettlement and other legal pathways to help them out.
The implementation of these provisions, however, depends on the good will of the bloc’s member states. This is where the problem lies — the refugees/migration debate in the EU, while valid, is poisoned by the xenophobic, particularly Islamophobic, tropes pushed by nativist politicians. [my emphasis]
Gerald Knaus, an Austrian refugee expert who serves as the Chair of the European Stability Initiative think tank and was a key player in negotiating the 2016 agreement with Turkey, calls attention to how problematic the framing of refugee and even normal immigration issue in "hydraulic" terms is, i.e., "migratory pressures" (above), gigantic "flows" of refugees, a "flood" of refugees, etc. This frames the entire issue in terms of menace, threat, and danger. "The faster we put behind us hydraulic metaphors about borders and migration, the quicker we will find our way to a solutions-oriented debate." ("An den Grenzen Europas" in [Österreichische] Sicherheitspolitische Jahresvorschau 2021, p. 95)
Mamedov:
This context dangerously narrows the European conversation on Afghanistan to migration and its alleged threat to the European way of life. Seen from this angle, seeking transactional deals with the Taliban in order to “keep the migrants out” might look superficially attractive. In the longer run, however, they would not only make a further mockery of European ideals, such as women’s rights, but would also be short-sighted as they won’t contribute to creating conditions in Afghanistan less conducive to migration in the first place.
Instead, the EU should engage with the Taliban on a much broader agenda, including development, regional stability, human rights, and security. [my emphasis]
One of several ways the EU limits itself in ways that are not only morally shabby but unnecessary risky in straight-up realist terms.
Mamedov mentions several ways in which an understanding of what happened in the Afghanistan War could improve EU policies. This kind of advice is the standard tone of professional foreign policy articles, even in situations where the willingness of the parties being addressed may be small to nonexistent.
But even EU foreign ministers might be able to grasp this part:
But any European engagement must begin with a recognition that, as a U.S. junior partner for the past twenty years, the EU holds a weak hand in the new Afghanistan. That means that the EU should shed the notion of Afghanistan as another arena of global competition with Russia and China. To the contrary, it should leave Moscow and Beijing in the driving seat when it comes to relations with Kabul. [my emphasis]
Maybe China or Russia will take another shot at installing a regime in Kabul more suitable to them. For the last 180 years or so, i.e., since the start of the First Anglo-Afghan War in 1839, that has not tended to produce happy results for those foreign powers making the attempt. My favorite stodgy-but-reliable source, Britannica Online, summarizes how that British effort worked out, "On January 6, 1842, some 4,500 British and Indian troops, with 12,000 camp followers, marched out of Kabul. Bands of Afghans swarmed around them, and the retreat ended in a bloodbath."
Although I find the term "political Islam" problematic, this observation of Mamedov's is also important:
The swift Taliban victory should prompt a broader rethink in the EU on how it deals with political Islam. Islamic militants everywhere interpret the Taliban’s success and the failure of the Muslim Brotherhood-style parliamentary Islamism in Egypt, Palestine or Tunisia, as proof that violent resistance, not compromise and accommodation, works best.
Although this particular "swift" Taliban victory took the better part of 20 years. The final collapse calls to mind the comment economist Rudi Dornbusch about the Mexican financial crisis of 1994: "It took forever and then it took a night." (FrontlineMurder Money & Mexico WGBH 1995)
It is often sad and aggravating to see how public discussion in Austria over refugee issues goes.
This is a small example from Der Standard, which is actually a very good news organization, and a partner newspaper of the New York Times. It's about refugees arriving from Belarus into Lithuania, . The article includes this sentence:
Der baltische Staat [Litauen] hatte zuletzt eine Rekordzahl von Flüchtlingen und Migranten registriert, die von Belarus aus ins Land kamen. Heuer wurden bisher mehr als 3000 von ihnen aufgegriffen – im gesamten Vorjahr waren es gerade einmal 81. Für das Drei-Millionen-Einwohner-Land ist das eine echte Herausforderung.
The Baltic state [Lithuania] has recently registered a record number of refugees and migrants entering the country from Belarus. So far this year, more than 3,000 of them have been picked up – in the entire previous year there were just 81. This is a real challenge for the country of three million inhabitants.] (my emphasis)
But the article doesn't elaborate on how 3,000 refugees, which is 0.1% of three million, is a "real challenge" for Lithuania. It does later ridiculously describe them as a "type of partisan warfare," i.e., guerilla warfare, by Belarus against Lithuania. I think there are some diplomats as well as reporters who need to sober up on this matter.
If Lithuania is having some kind of crisis handling three thousand refugees, that sounds to me like they weren't taking minimum preparations for such a contingency.
This is a small example of how the EU's general head-in-the-sand approach to refugees makes it unnecessarily vulnerable to neighboring countries giving refugees access to cross the border. As the Standard article explains, Belarus is allowing/encouraging this as part of its current differences with the EU, "Der Präsident von Belarus öffnet seine Grenzen für Flüchtlinge und Migranten aus dem Nahen Osten, um sich an Litauen für die westlichen Sanktionen zu rächen." ("The President of Belarus is opening his borders to refugees and migrants from the Middle East to take revenge on Lithuania for Western sanctions.")
The EU was understandably concerned by the 2020 presidential election in Belarus, which really was stolen by Alexander Lukashenko, who continues as President. Belarus borders on Russia in the east, Ukraine in the south, and in the north and east by EU members Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. Belarus is one of six countries that are part of the Eastern Partnership framework with the EU, along with Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine.
EU policy is to encourage stability and democracy in those countries and to promote friendly and cooperative relations. Being in the Eastern Partnership does not mean that a country is in a formal process of accession to the EU. But that is one possibility the EU wants to leave open, particularly for Georgia and Ukraine at the moment. However, the possibility of those countries formally becoming part of the EU and NATO is viewed by the Russian government as a potential threat.
During his Presidency when began in 1994 and continues today, Lukashenko has tended to seek a balance between Russia and the EU. There are strong affiliations to Russia and similarities in the political systems of Putin and Lukashenko. But he's tried to avoid being a situation where Russia could effective dominate or even incorporate it politically.
But his government's reckless decision a couple of months ago to commit what really was air piracy by forcing down a commercial flight legally transiting Belarussian airspace in order to arrest a dissident Belarussian journalist and his girlfriend triggered targeting sanctions by the EU. It also resulted in the very practical move by EU countries to restrict flights between Belarus and EU locations, as well as sanctions against some Belarussian officials.
So the release of refugees to cross the Lithuanian border is a retaliation against the EU by Lukashenko's government. Which should have been obvious to everyone involved on the EU side and should have prompted a well thought-out response.
But EU policy on immigration and refugees is so broken and the political leadership so irresponsible in how they frame the issue that they are now sputtering in horror at a few thousand refugees coming from Belarus. One doesn't have to be any kind of foreign policy expert to see that such weak and feckless behavior by the EU in such situations makes the whole Union subject to blackmail from unhappy neighboring regimes.
Again, the 3,000 refugees Lithuania is treating as an alarming crisis is 0.1% of their population. The total population of the current 27 EU member states is 448 million. Three thousand is 0.001% of that population. Is the EU really so weak and pathetic that it can't handle an obviously easily foreseeable consequence to the very necessary response of the EU to Lukashenko's plane hijacking?
In remarks carried by the state-run Belta news agency, Lukashenko stressed that he had dealt with last year’s anti-government protests without involving other countries’ armed forces, but added that he would not hesitate to bring in Russian troops if necessary.
Belarus is able to quickly deploy 500,000 of its own personnel, but “if it is not enough, all Russian armed forces will be brought in,” Lukashenko said, according to Belta. “If it is necessary, we won’t hesitate.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that Moscow hasn’t received any official requests from Belarus to deploy troops, and the move “is possible only after an official request from the leadership of one country to the leadership of other.”
This appears to be mainly saber-rattling against the West. It does not constitute any real immediate threat to the West. But Balurus' neighbors Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia are all NATO members. And Lukashenko's threat is a not-so-subtle reminder that incorporating the Baltic states in particular into NATO was done in the expectation that there was no serious expectation liklihood that Russia would be likely to threaten them in the immediate future, a bit of post-Cold War triumphalism that should have been occasion for more careful calculations.
The refugees Belarus is using in the current situation should not be the occasion for hysteria by Belarus or any else. But Austrian Chancellor Sebastian "Basti" Kurz is using the occasion to show once again that he's the Savior of Austrians Against the Scary Scary Foreigners:
13 Cobra-Einsatzkräfte hat Innenminister Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) am Donnerstag in Wien gen Litauen verabschiedet. Mehr als 1100 Kilometer nordöstlich der Heimat sollen die Mitglieder der Spezialeinheit mithelfen, die löchrige EU-Außengrenze zu stopfen. ...
Der Einsatz der österreichischen Einsatzkräfte beginnt am 1. August und soll auf alle Fälle einige Wochen dauern. Wann er endet, hängt von der Entwicklung vor Ort ab.
[Interior Minister Karl Nehammer (ÖVP) bid farewell in Vienna on Thursday to 13 Cobra [elite police force] soldiers headed to Lithuania. More than 1100 kilometers northeast of home, the members of the special unit are to help plug the porous EU external border. ...
The deployment of the Austrian forces begins on August 1 and should last a few weeks in any case. When it ends depends on local developments.]
This is a cheap political stunt. Kurz constantly refers to refugees in terms of danger, threat, menace, danger - and rarely if ever in different terms. This is a truly dumb move, done for no other reason to bolster his own desired xenophobic image.
The Munich Süddeutsche Zeitung reports on the recently concluded summit of the EU heads of government in Ein Flop zum Schluss (Björn Finke and Matthias Kolb, 28.06.2021) Relations with Russia and Turkey were issues highlighted in the summit, as was a new human rights issue in member state Hungary.
There was some diplomatic Kabuki theater over proposals to have a formal EU summit with Russia. Poland and the Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania all opposed the initiative, which was presented as a joint proposal of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Immanuel Macron. On the face of it, it’s a dispute about whether such a summit would somehow reward Russia for misconduct. Lithuanian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said Russia would have to “pay a price” for such a summit.
Finke and Kolb interpret that, presumably following official guidance, as meaning, “Erst müsse Putin seine Politik des Spaltens, der Cyberangriffe und Desinformationskampagnen beenden, dann wird mal geschaut.” ("First, Putin has to end his policy of divisions, cyber attacks and disinformation campaigns, then we'll see.") This is a standard thing in diplomacy. Of course, in the grand scheme of things, countries need to talk especially about things on which they disagree. So, “you concede all these things first and then we’ll consider talking to you,” is diplomatic signaling. Since Merkel and Macron from the two strongest powers in the EU are making the proposal, they can now say to the Russians and to their publics, look, we’d like to do this but these former countries from “the eastern bloc” won’t go along.
There was also some additional Kabuki around the anti-LGBTI law that Viktor Orbán’s authoritarian Hungary just passed. My impression is that the law is likely to be overturned by an EU court action against it. Mark Rutte of the Netherlands and António Costa of Portugal asked Orbán if Hungary wanted to pass such a law obviously departing from minimum EU human rights standards, why they didn’t just leave the EU. But Hungary is not going to do that, because its economy is so heavily integrated into the EU’s and because it is a net beneficiary from EU financial assistance.
This is part of a wider EU pushback on Hungary’s violations of the Union’s minimal standards for democracy and the rule of law. For better or worse, economic requirements are more easily enforced under the EU treaties on a recalcitrant member state that standards for democracy and the rule of law (outside of the trade-related ones).
Finke's and Kolb's report also describe how central the refuee agreement of 2016 with Turkey is to EU-Turkish relations. Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan has caused problems for fellow NATO and EU members by dubious military interventions interventions in Libya, Syria, and Nagorno-Karabakh and disputes over maritime territorial rights with Greece. But the refugee agreement, which in some ways was a constructive model, is the way the EU "solved" the immediate refugee crisis of 2015-16. The EU adopted a kick-the-can-down-the-road approach to taking further substantial steps to better deal with a similar crisis. In other words, it still hasn't come up with one.
This gives Turkey a lot of clout in tempering EU criticism, whether its foreign policy, human rights concerns, or security question about the Turkish government's interactions with Turkish political and religious groups in the EU.
Erstaunlich kurz verläuft die Debatte über die Türkei. Der Gipfel stimmt dem Vorschlag der EU-Kommission zu, der Türkei bei einem bis 2024 verlängerten Migrationsabkommen 3,5 Milliarden Euro für die Unterbringung von etwa 3,7 Millionen syrischen Flüchtlingen zu zahlen. Das Geld würde aus dem Budget ihrer Behörde kommen, sagt von der Leyen. Auch wenn in der Abschlusserklärung weiter Defizite der Türkei bei Rechtsstaat und Demokratie beklagt und der Beginn formeller Verhandlungen zur Lösung der Zypernfrage verlangt werden, sollen nun "auf fachlicher Ebene" Vorbereitungen für die Modernisierung der Zollunion beginnen.
Wie sich die Stimmung verändert hat, beweist die Pressekonferenz des französischen Präsidenten. Die Spannungen hätten abgenommen und auch wenn er Griechen und Zyprern verspricht, den Sommer über weiter wachsam zu sein, sagt Macron in Richtung Ankara: "Wir werden auch die Zusammenarbeit wiederaufnehmen." So ein Satz von Macron, der dem türkischen Präsidenten Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in inniger Feindschaft verbunden schien, ist auch etwas, was man sich in Brüssel vor Monaten nicht vorstellen konnte.
[The debate on Turkey was surprisingly short. The summit agrees with the EU Commission's proposal to pay Turkey 3.5 billion euros for the accommodation of around 3.7 million Syrian refugees under a migration [sic] agreement extended until 2024. The money would come from her agency's budget, [EU Commission President Ursula] von der Leyen says. Even though the final declaration continues to complain about Turkey's shortcomings in the rule of law and democracy and calls for the start of formal negotiations to resolve the Cyprus question, preparations for the modernization of the customs union are now to begin "on a technical level."
How the mood has changed is demonstrated by the press conference of the French President. Tensions have eased and even though he promises Greeks and Cypriots that he will continue to be vigilant throughout the summer, Macron says to Ankara: "We will also resume cooperation." Such a sentence by Macron, who seemed to be intimately attached to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is also something that could not have been imagined in Brussels months ago.] (my translation)
David Herszenhorn reports on a new report issued by the safely establishment Democratic think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), Biden urged to push EU to be a military powerPolitico EU 06/2/2021.
This is certainly an interesting development! It looks like a trial balloon. A safely establishment Democratic think tank like the Center for American Progess wouldn't go this far off the farm without some encouragement from the Biden-Harris Administration. I assume it will at least make some long-comfortable clichés a little more complicated.
After the 1989 revolutions in eastern Europe, the US began to pursue a policy of encouraging the rapid expansion of the European Union and of NATO. The EU nations also wanted to expand the Union. And their desire to do so had similar motivations as those of the US: to provide assistance in development, to expand the EU free trade zone under the neoliberal rules of the EU agreements, to create and incentive for former Warsaw Pact and Yugoslavian countries to set up liberal democratic systems with imparital rule of law structures.
But the US also saw EU expansion as a way to weaken the cohesion of the EU as an independent power bloc in order to protect the United States new status as the "unipolar" world's hegemon. All this was what classical "realist" theory would have led one to expect. Once the Cheney-Bush Administration took power and the 9/11 attacks became the justification for the Global War on Terror, their determination to strengthen the US as the unipolar power. That was the era when Republicans re-christened French fries as "freedom fries" as a display of contempt for the European allies of the US.
A similar calculation was seen in NATO, in an even more pronounced way. NATO was expanded to include the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland in 1999; Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia in 2004; Albania and Croatia in 2009; Montenegro in 2017; and North Macedonia in 2020. The new countries were eager to gain access to NATO. During the Cheney-Bush years, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously mocked the older NATO allies who criticized the invasion of Iraq as "old Europe", while the aspiring members were more willing to provide nominal support to the invasion. This obviously increased tensions within the NATO of 2003, where Britain was faithfully, even slavishly supportive of the Iraq War, and reduced the liklihood of the EU building a strong common European defense force separate from NATO. AS the CAP report relates of this period, "the eastward expansion of the EU further complicated efforts to push ahead on EU defense, as eastern EU members remained acutely aware of their dependence and reliance on American military power to ensure their independence."
The Obama-Biden Administration had friendly relations with the European allies. But it didn't abandon the basic policy of regarding the EU as a potential "peer competitor" whose increased political and especially military cohesion would be unwelcome to the EU.
The CAP report suggests a definite shift in that perspective. As Politico EU reports:
There is general agreement among critics and proponents of EU military integration that national armed forces in Europe are not up to scratch — especially in Germany, the EU’s richest and politically most powerful member.
On this point, the authors of the new report readily agree. “Today, much of Europe’s military hardware is in a shocking state of disrepair,” they wrote. “European forces aren’t ready to fight with the equipment they have, and the equipment they have isn’t good enough.”
But the authors also insist the U.S. should accept its part of the blame. “This is a European failure,” they wrote. “But Washington has played a critical, if underappreciated, role in precipitating this failure.” And they pointed to the unsparing push for increased NATO spending — something Donald Trump did louder and more aggressively than his predecessors — as central to the flawed outcome.
“For more than two decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations have vigorously pressed European capitals to bolster their national forces in support of NATO,” they wrote. “But this focus on national defense spending levels, embodied by the 2014 commitment by NATO members to spend two percent of their GDP on defense, simply hasn’t worked. European defense today remains anemic, despite noticeable increases in spending.”
This implies a shift to regarding the EU's potential as a "peer competitor" as a danger to be avoided to not only less of a risk, but potentially promoting American interests in some significant degree. The CAP report is blunt on this point: "U.S. opposition to EU defense efforts since the 1990s has been a strategic mistake that has undermined both the EU and NATO." That is a frank criticism of Democratic and Republican administrations.
I would assume that part of the consideration here is that the Trump Administration and its MAGA policy, which included notable hostility toward EU countries, led to a realization among many European leaders that they could no longer count on the kind of close support that the NATO countries had maintained for decades, despite significant tensions at time, such as the Anglo-French-Israeli attempt to seize the Suez Canal in 1956.
But the CAP report also suggests that its authors are drawing a similiar lesson from the American perspective, i.e., that a future MAGA administration might be happy to use US dominance in NATO to sabotage the EU's ability to defend itself in a potential confrontation with Russia or in other situations judged to require military intervention to protect European security. And there is an implied calculation that the longterm common security interests of the US and European might be better served with an EU military arrangement that would not be so subject to disruption by a new MAGA government in Washington. They write:
There is ... an increasing sense that Europe must stand up for its owninterests in an era of greater geopolitical competition and questions about American reliability. A ECFR survey, conducted after the 2020 U.S. residential election, revealed that “[o]ne of the most striking findings … is that at least 60 per cent of respondents in every surveyed country—and an average of 67 per across all these countries — believe that they cannot always rely on the US to defend them and, therefore, need to invest in European defence.” [my emphasis]
There are some significant reservations I have about the CAP analysis. One is that they argue that because citizens of EU countries are also citizens of the EU as such, e.g., they vote directly for members of the European Parliament. And that therefore EU citizens seem to see defense as much more an EU responsibility than a national responsibility. I'm not at all sure how well founded that assumption is.
Another concern is the report's stated hope for the result that more US support for EU self-defense efforts: "It would no doubt win admiration within the EU and put the United States where it should be, which is on the opposite sides of China and Russia." Being on the "opposite" side of Russia and China is hardly a sensible goal. Russia and China won't be on the same side of all issues. And there are issues like nuclear arms control and nonproliferation and climate change where the US and the EU have the strongest incentive to find effective ways of cooperating with those two countries, even when serious disagreements on other important issuews continue.
A third is that the report does not engage with the issue of EU democratization, or addressing the "democratic deficit," as it is often called. The EU's integration strategy has relied on the hope that economic integration would lead to greater political integration and reinforce democracy and the rule of law in individual nations. But EU laws and institutions are far more effective in enforcing economic regulations than political ones. The EU is currently struggling with serious democratic and rule-of-law backsliding in Poland and even more so in Hungary. The economic ties complicate enforcing the EU treaty requirements in such situations. Strenthening military integration without first improving the mechanisms for requiring member countries to maintain the minimal democratic and rule-of-law requiresment for intial membership would likely make the democratic-deficit problem even more difficult to solve.
The CAP report briefly argues that pushinhg for a military union might actually facilitate the securing of democratic norms in EU countries.
It also addresses the austerity-policy problem, but seems to assume that austerity economics is a particular problem of Germany's. Germany's political elite is stubbornly committed to it. But it's a more general problem among the wealthier "core" countries of the EU:
CAP also uses this recent example, which provides a disturbing example of EU willingness to use military force, although CAP does add with disapproval that this example has the EU being "overly aggressive" ab out a situation of which I would definitely be more critical:
... stereotypes of EU pacifism are incongruent with the EU’s overly aggressive approach to countering migration. In the half-decade since the migration crisis, the EU has turned Frontex—a small, bureaucratic EU agency that coordinated EU border policy—into a 10,000-strong armed force. In early 2020, when Turkey initiated a migration crisis, Frontex was accused of ramming migrant vessels, potentially committing human rights abuses. Rather than condemning Frontex or the Greek coast guard for this horrific act, the heads of the EU flew to Greece to demonstrate EU solidarity with this hard-line approach. EU leaders, perceiving migration as a threat to the union, were seemingly willing to take inhumane, hard-line steps to protect its union. Contrary to EU skeptics’ characterizations of it as a postmodern state that has repudiated the use of force and is strictly committed to vague notions of international law over defending its borders, the EU actually went too far and potentially violated international humanitarian law. This is not the approach of a confident global power upholding global norms, but it is hardly the response of political actors from Venus [a favorite polemic neoconservative stereotype of NATO allie like Germany and France]. [my emphasis]
It will be interesting to see the follow-up reactions to the CAP report from Democrats in Congress and the Biden Administration.
Wolfgang Münchau in Chained togetherEurointelligence 11/29/2020 explains why he thinks unity among the eurozone countries is a more urgent European economic and political need that great EU integration:
There would have been no eurozone crisis if the monetary union had been accompanied by a small fiscal and banking union from the outset. There would have been no Brexit if the EU had offered the UK a form of membership that did not include a commitment to ever-closer union. There would certainly be no stand-off with Hungary and Poland right now, because the two countries would not be in a position to blackmail the others over the EU budget.
The origin of my fundamental disagreement with Angela Merkel is precisely over this: she prioritised the cohesion of the EU and has been resisting eurozone integration. [my emphasis]
In a recent Eurointelligence podcast, Timothy Garten Ash on central European cakeism, Münchau interviews the British expert on eastern Europe about the current conflict over democracy and the rule of law in Hungary and Poland and how current EU structures make it a particular challenge to address. Ash says he thinks "illiberal democracy" is a term that still applies to Poland, but that Hungary is no longer an actual democracy, "illiberal" or otherwise.
A crackup of the eurozone would be a tremendous blow to European unity. Münchau is still sounding the alarm about the serious weak point of the eurozone construction:
Advocates of an ever-closer union have persistently misjudged the dynamics of a monetary union: that it leads to crises with terrible human consequences, unless it operates a fiscal union, a banking union and an unemployment re-insurance system. We have fledgling versions of all of them, but none work very well.
European banking is more national today than it was 20 years ago. As long as the recovery fund is anchored in the EU budget, it will remain a macroeconomic irrelevance. It should have been a eurozone-level project from the outset. Without more eurozone integration, internal imbalances will keep on widening. As constituted today, the eurozone is still unsustainable. [my emphasis]
Der größere Kontext für die Außenpolitik der EU ist, dass China zur größten Wirtschaftsmacht der Welt wird und seinen Einfluss zunehmend in Südasien, Europa, dem Nahen Osten und Afrika geltend macht. Die EU muss sich auf den zunehmenden Einfluss Chinas einstellen und nach Wegen suchen, um ihre internationale Position zwischen China, den USA und Russland, den stärksten externen Mächten mit großem Einfluss in Europa, auszugleichen.
Russlands Bemühungen, Nationen wie die Ukraine und Georgien, die Teil der ehemaligen Sowjetunion waren, politisch und militärisch zu dominieren, sind ein großes Anliegen der EU: insbesondere dort, wo Russland abtrünnige Ministaaten unterstützt oder illegal Gebiete annektiert, wie sie es 2014 auf der Krim taten. Die EU hat auch ein Interesse daran, illegale russische Einmischung in die Innenpolitik der EU-Länder zu verhindern, einschließlich russischer staatlicher Propagandabemühungen im Internet und der russischen Finanzierung politischer Parteien und Sekten in EU-Ländern.
Gleichzeitig hat die EU ein Interesse daran, Geschäfte mit Russland und russischen Unternehmen zu fördern, um gemeinsame wirtschaftliche Interessen zu fördern und friedliche Beziehungen zwischen den Ländern zu fördern. Russland ist stark vom Energiegeschäft abhängig, und die EU hat das Ziel der Energieunabhängigkeit, daher sind Geschäfte wie der Nord Stream II für beide Seiten attraktiv. Aber die EU muss solche Verpflichtungen auch im größeren militärischen und politischen Kontext bewerten.
Die Beziehungen zu den USA sind während der Präsidentschaft von Donald Trump, der die langjährige US-Politik gegenüber Europa in Frage gestellt wurde, problematischer geworden. Aber sowohl die demokratische als auch die Republikanische Regierung in den USA tendieren dazu, eine größere, aber weniger als vollständig politisch integrierte EU zu bevorzugen, wobei die Regierung George W. Bush aktiv Spaltungen in der EU über den Irakkrieg förderte.
Eine wichtige Priorität sollte es sein, eine Methode für den Umgang mit Flüchtlingen innerhalb der EU zu finden, die sich nicht auf das derzeitige Dublin-System stützt, das nicht für das Ausmaß der Flüchtlingszuflüsse in den 2010er Jahren ausgelegt war. Der Schutz der EU-Außengrenzen ist von entscheidender Bedeutung. Aber die EU hat auch rechtliche, praktische und moralische Verpflichtungen gegenüber Asylbewerbern, die von antidemokratischen Gruppen genutzt werden können, um Nationalismus und Fremdenfeindlichkeit zu fördern, wenn sie nicht vernünftiger als bisher behandelt werden.
Die Beziehungen zur Türkei sind wichtig, nicht zuletzt, weil die Türkei derzeit 3,5 Millionen Flüchtlinge aufnimmt, für die die EU im Rahmen eines 2016 offiziell ausgelaufenen Abkommens finanziert werden kann. Die Spannungen zwischen der Türkei und Griechenland stellen besondere Komplikationen dar, da beide NATO-Verbündete sind, die Türkei aber nicht Teil der EU ist.
Die Bemühungen um die Stabilisierung des Nahen Ostens und Nordafrikas und die Förderung der demokratischen Regierungsführung und Entwicklung dort sind ebenfalls wichtig, sowohl um den Frieden und die für beide Seiten vorteilhaften Wirtschaftsbeziehungen zu fördern, als auch um die Einwanderung aus diesen Gebieten in die EU zu normalisieren.
"Erdogan uses all means to keep Europe disunited and morally compromised," he writes. His general characterization of Turkey's policy may come off as a bit melodramatic: "Erdogan inspires Turks and Muslims with a vision of a modern empire stretching from Africa through Europe to Asia. You may not see New Turkey on the map, but it is becoming a reality."
But Erdoğan has been undertaking a more active policy in recent years:
Turkey already has a presence in Africa, the Middle East, Europe and Asia. It has military bases in Libya, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Qatar, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Northern Cyprus and Albania. It is militarily engaged in civil wars in Libya and Syria, and now in Azerbaijan against Armenia. This way Turkey is extending its reach into the Caucasus. Once the Turkish military puts its foot down, it creates realities on the ground. The buffer zone in northern Syria has turned de facto into a Turkish administration zone, with Turkish lira and products circulating. There is no need to change border lines, as unity with Turkey is an everyday experience. [my emphasis]
There are even new complications with Israel, including one the outbreak of the latest military conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. "Turkey is now blatantly antagonistic toward Israel. There is no reason for Jerusalem to continue to placate it." (Zev Chafets, Israel Must Choose Better in Nagorno-KarabakhBloomberg Opinion 10/22/2020) But Israel has had good relations with Azerbaijan for a while. Israel gets arms from Azerbaijan and sells them weapons. Also, "The country shares a border with Iran, Israel’s arch enemy. At the very least, that makes Baku an important source for intelligence gathering. There are also reports that it is a potential launching pad for the Israeli air force. That makes Azerbaijan a rare and valuable asset, one that Israel is not going to abandon."
Turkey is currently the country in the world that hosts the largest number of refugees. (Ranking der zehn Länder mit den meisten aufgenommenen anerkannten Flüchtlingen (Stand: Ende 2019)Statista 19.06.2020), 3.6 million as of the end of 2019. Because of the EU's kick-the-can-down-the-road approach to external immigration and especially toward refugees and asylum-seekers, Turkey can use it's refugees as a political club against the EU. As EuroIntelligence recalls:
Erdogan is a master of manipulation and turning arguments upside down. He sent refugees towards the Greek border to remind the EU what they could expect if they crossed his red lines. Turkey has crossed Europe's red lines many times, but there were no consequences. He sends out drilling ships into Greek waters, calls them back just in time for the EU summit, and sends them out again, blaming Greece for not having kept its promises. Who is holding Erdogan accountable for his aggressive acts? Europeans still do not seem to want to see through his tactics. [my emphasis]
Erdoğan plays another cynical game with refugees in Turkey: "Refugees are hostages to his games. They are used as a threat or bargaining chip with the EU. And the men are being trained and sent into his proxy wars in Libya or Azerbaijan." (my emphasis)
As uncomfortable as it may be for EU politicians, the current refugee policy gives Erdoğan leverage that a sensible refugee policy. But, more than five years after the refugee crisis of 2015-16 began, the EU is still sticking with the completely overwhelmed Dublin System for immigration and with Angela Merkel's 2016 arrangement with Turkey to hold refugees in exchange for payments from the EU.
This is one of several ways the EU is experiencing limits on its foreign policy clout that in many ways are self-imposed. In the case of immigration policy, foreign policy deferral to Erdoğan's Turkey is a real part of the price of holding on to the Dublin System. (Jennifer Rankin, Erdoğan puts EU's failure to agree a common migration policy in spotlightGuardian 03/02/2020)
Deutsche Welle recently described the situation this way (Seda Serdar, Can the EU-Turkey deal be fixed? ):
Turkey hosts more than 3.5 million refugees, more than any other country in the world. It has so far spent €36.7 billion ($40 billion) on dealing with the refugee crisis. The EU committed €6 billion ($6.5 billion) to help Turkey.
Turkey accuses the EU of making late payments, while the EU alleges that Turkey is not sticking to its end of the deal and loosening security controls on migration routes.
Nevertheless, both sides need each other. The refugee crisis is too big for a single country to cope with on its own — a reality that has led European leaders to signal that financial aid to Turkey could continue beyond the 2016-2019 deal.
Knaus notes that the vast majority refugees in Turkey, who are primarily Syrians, mostly seem content to stay in Turkey and don't attempt to move into the EU. The 3.5 million refugees in Turkey are mostly integrated in some way into Turkish society. Most aren't living in overcrowded refugee camps, in other words. And that makes intuitive sense, because many hope to return to Syria at some point and Turkey is a Muslim country. Obviously, there are conflicts, including the hostility of Erdoğan's to Kurdish refugees and the kind of ethnic cleansing which Turkey is enacting in its occupied zone of Syria, displacing Kurds and resettling non-Kurdish Syrians on their land.
The European Union has come up with a recovery fund to deal with the immediate effects of the Covid-19 crisis and the resulting start of a recession that is likely to be very serious (Jim Brunsden et al, EU recovery fund: how the plan will workFinancial Times 07/21/2020).
The final compromise is a scaled-down version of what Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, originally requested from leaders in May. The core grants component of the recovery effort was reduced to €390bn, considerably less than the €500bn recommended by the commission and pushed by Germany and France.
However, it is still a landmark agreement, against considerable odds, which will give Brussels the unprecedented power to borrow hundreds of billions on the markets and hand it out as budgetary support to member states.
EU leaders have made the routine optimistic predictions that typically go with such supposed breakthrough moments. But opinions are very much divided on its prospects.
Mark Schieritz provides an optimistic take in Das rechnet sichDie Zeit 23.07.2020, starting with a caution about predicting historic turning points (my translations from the German):
Was it clear to the French when they stormed the Bastille that they would trigger a revolution and overthrow the king? Did the men who threw tea boxes into the sea in the Port of Boston in December 1773 in protest against British tax policy suspected that three years later the United States would declare itself independent? Probably not. History doesn't come out and say, Hello, it's me, History! It hides behind the events and in between. You have to look for them if you want to find them.
But he chooses to take what for him is a positive view that the deal shows the EU moving more into the macroeconomic role that the member states need it to play:
One could say that by financing itself like a state, the EU itself becomes a little bit of a state. And just as the nation-state in yesterday's world was the condition of national self-determination, so in the world of tomorrow a united EU is the condition of European self-determination. Because that is the only way they can preserve themselves. The British will still experience this. And maybe they will even come back. You would be welcome.
It was a long time coming, but the coronavirus crisis seems to have allowed Europe to make a leap towards genuine integration. The global financial crisis in 2008 exposed the inherent fragilities and incompleteness of Europe’s monetary union, prompting a decade of agonising debate over fiscal union. Essentially, sharing a common currency without sharing a real budget was always going to be unstable and potentially dangerous.
But now European leaders seem to be finally facing up this profound architectural problem. Common debt, common expenditure and the possibility of common taxation – which all seemed out of reach over the last decade – were accepted this week unanimously after a marathon summit that lasted more than four days.
Yet despite his optimism, most of the article is taken up describing the shortcomings of the proposal and the political risks for the EU that it has dramatized.
More pessimsitic take come from two sources that were very prescient about the 2015 Greece crisis, Wolfgang Münchau and Yanis Varoufakis.
Varoufakis reminds us that Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning austerity economics is still alive and well among the European establishment:
[T]he recovery fund is a distraction from the elephant in the room: massive austerity. According to the International Monetary Fund, the eurozone’s total 2020 income will fall by 10%, causing an average budget deficit of more than 11%, with weaker countries such as Italy and Greece facing a much larger drop.
That would not be catastrophic per se, if it were not for the determination of Berlin and other governments to push member states to balance their books by 2021 (as witnessed by the 11 June Eurogroup communique). Even if the nascent recovery brings down, for example, Italy’s budget deficit to, say, 9%, to balance its books Rome must impose a cruel level of austerity equal to a new 9% of GDP in cuts and taxes. Similarly with Greece. Given that even Germany will have to practise austerity to balance its budget, the whole continent will be treated to an intensification of the doom loop between austerity and recession. [my emphasis]
He also notes that the amount of the European recovery fund is actually a small amount giving the like size of the recession facing the EU, especially in light of "the austerity tsunami down the line" he describes.
And he fears that the conditions of the program "are a Eurosceptic’s dream. ... It is almost as if the whole thing were designed by a cunning Eurosceptic." And one big part of it is that:
... our great and good leaders also decided that each national government will have the right to freeze payments, for up to three months, to any other government while it scrutinises how the money is to be spent. Endless recriminations are guaranteed, as the Dutch lambast the Italian government’s pension payments and Rome returns the favour with reports on the Netherlands’ famous tax loopholes. Imagine the mood in the room when such a challenge is made to, say, Spain, by a prime minister whose government the EU bribed, in the form of Thatcher-like rebates, to get the recovery fund across the line. [my emphasis]
In other words, this is another case of the EU collectively trying to do the least it can get away with in terms of a sound macroeconomic policy. All while operating with the time bombs embedded in the construction of the euro and the ludicrous borrowing and spending limits the 19 eurozone have imposed on themselves.
There is a discussion underway in the EU about a plan for the EU to borrow money and distribute it to member countries to counter the negative economic effects of the corona crisis.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Merkel proposed a €500 billion recovery fund for the European Union in which the EU would borrow funds to distribute (not loan) to member countries to deal with the current recession that we're so far calling the COVID crisis or the coronavirus crisis. (Daniel Boffey, Merkel and Macron propose €500bn EU rescue fundGuardian 05/18/2020) One of the notable features of the proposed fund is that it would be an project of the full European Union, not of the euro currency zone.
The press like to refer to the relationship between the two leaders as "Merkron," reflecting the continued centrality of German-French leadership in the EU. A role that has now increased in relative importance with Brexit.
The "Merkron" proposal drew support from 23 of the EU's 27 members. Four countries, styled as the "Frugal Four," objected to the proposals on the grounds that it would be a direct EU support to member nations without an obligation to repay: Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden. Austria's baby-faced Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has been prominent in making the case for the Frugal Four, also known as the Greedy Four. They made a counter-proposal whose central concept was that the assistance be made in the form of loans that would have to be repaid. This, of course, would affect the national credit rating and bond rates of countries like Spain and Italy, especially in the latter case increasing the likelihood of a new euro crisis.
The proposal has been evolving in the negotiations with the Greedy Four, with Ursula von der Leyen as head of the EU Commission proposing a variant. Lionel Laurent reports (An $826 Billion Battle Is Brewing in EuropeBloomberg Opinion 05/28/2020:
The European Union’s pandemic recovery plan has all the hallmarks of a historic leap in the dark for the 27-member bloc.
It aims to unleash as much as 750 billion euros ($826 billion) of fiscal stimulus, fueled by joint borrowing on financial markets - a big deal for member states that have always jealously guarded the power to tax and spend. The fact that the plan unveiled by Commission boss Ursula von der Leyen is so clearly aligned with the proposal from France’s Emmanuel Macron and Germany’s Angela Merkel is especially positive: Paris’s desire for continental assertiveness and foreign-policy grandeur hasn’t always matched Berlin’s focus on balanced budgets. ...
At the center of the battle are the so-called “frugal four” - the Netherlands, Sweden, Austria and Denmark - taking up a combative role similar to that of the British when they were members. As wealthy net contributors to the bloc’s budget, they’ve already been pushing back against what they see as unfair increases to the share they’re expected to chip in after Brexit; February negotiations on the next seven-year budget went nowhere after 28 hours of talks.
The Covid-19 crisis has redoubled efforts by the frugal four to push back against perceived profligacy, as the EU considers a bigger budget outlay than before, at 1.1 trillion euros (still only about 1% of gross national income), adds on pandemic stimulus tools and proposes aid in the form of grants rather than loans to be paid back — a package worth 2.4 trillion euros. The budget hard-liners may lack the diplomatic heft of Germany, but they can’t be ignored, as the plan needs unanimous support across national parliaments. [my emphasis]
Basti (Austrian Chancellor Kurz) is working this to promote his own anti-European credentials among the hard-right voters he works hard to cultivate. Basti has often aligned himself with the Visegrad group (Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia) on other anti-European positions like flat opposition to an revision of the Failed Dublin System of immigration and asylum processing. But his friends in the Visegard Group, including the EU's current start authoritarian, Hungarian Prime Mnister Viktor Orbán, want some of the money foreseen in the Merkron aid concept.
And, of course, different players try to negotiate deals over all kinds of things, so that's a factor always present in EU politics. (Just like every other kind of politics!)
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz said that he and the other leaders of the EU’s so-called frugal four group were encouraged by some aspects of the European Commission’s proposal for a coronavirus crisis recovery fund, but cautioned it represents just a “starting point” for negotiations.
“What we find positive - not just myself, but the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark - is that there is a time limit and that the fund will be a one-time emergency measure and not the first step toward a debt union,” Kurz, who has emerged as the unofficial spokesman of the frugal faction, said in a telephone interview with POLITICO on Wednesday.
“Considering that there are many in Europe who want such a debt union, it’s important to us that this be clarified in writing once and for all,” he said, referring to concerns among the frugal group that the fund could morph into a permanent fixture, opening the door to mutualization of members' debt under the banner of the EU. [my emphasis]
Such political melodramas need to be understood in the context of EU politics, which is too often superficially reported even by the European press.
The EU is a strange critter. Its formal justifications are that it has promoted peace and democracy in Europe. And that's true. It's done both. But the teeth of the EU legal structure is in the economic area, and that structure is very much in the mode of the neoliberal gospel that we see embedded in "trade" treaties that are actually corporate-deregulation treaties.´ So despite the reality of the peace and democracy rationales, which I think are generally taken very seriously, the EU has no common foreign policy (to speak of), no common EU military, and a unanimity rule on major policies that make it extremely difficult to enforce the democracy part.
But the trade laws based on the deregulation-privatization model are enforceable in the courts. And the corporate lobbies aren't at all inclined to give up the advantages the EU structure brings them. Business regulation is dominated by EU laws and rules, but the various forms of social insurance - "social state" polices as they are also called - are the responsibility of individual countries, which given the way the European Supreme Court (EuGH) interprets the laws, creates heavy pressure to lower social-insurance protections toward the lowest common denominator. But it's not just the courts. The EU Commission, which is the EU executive body, has for years pushed member states to privatize their national health insurance programs, though fortunately most EU governments weren't so politically suicidal that they actually did much of it.
There's a lot of justified talk about the "democratic deficit" in the EU. I'm guessing that not even half of the voters in EU countries could correctly describe how laws are made by the EU Commission, the European Council, the Council of the European Union (not the same as the European Council!), and the European Parliament. For corporate lobbyists, this is a *desirable* state of affairs. Neither Merkel nor Macron have any intention of rocking that boat. And here's where the unanimity principle comes into play. If Macron and Merkel think it somehow looks good politically to advocate a common EU borrowing-and-subsidy program that they may not actually want, as long as they know that even one country will veto it, they are free to posture without having to worry they'll actually have to carry through. That way they can be the Good Europeans whose enlightened proposal got blocked by some annoying small countries.
Generally, the richer countries would prefer to have the vetoing country be one of the former "Eastern Bloc" countries. But in this case, the lowly Eastern countries want the money, so it's the Greedy Four who are the sticks in the mud on this one. If Germany and France apply even a fraction of the pressure they applied to Greece, Italy, Ireland, Spain, and Portugal in the last euro crisis to enact austerity measures, the dissenters will come around. (Craig Crowther, 'Frugal Four' will come round to EU's €750bn COVID-19 recovery fund, says former Finland PM StubbEuronews 05/28/2020) If Merkel and Macron don't apply that kind of pressure, we'll know they aren't serious. Since we're talking here about using public funds largely to bail out failing corporations and banks, it's possible that Merkel and Macron are serious on this one. Even staunch neoliberal austerians are true believers in "socialism for the rich."
Yanis Varoufakis is skeptical of the proposal, which he doesn't think will help with the problem the "periphery" EU countries like Italy face with pressure on their bond rates in a crisis. On the surface, the Merkron proposal is a move to make the EU more of a "transfer union". But the more critical problem is to make the eurozone (18 countries) a transfer union. That would mean things like have a eurozone-wide unemployment support program, for instance. Otherwise, the eurozone still faces the problem of the kind of tremendous pressure for internal devalution, i.e., lowering wages and living standards, that countries like Greece and Italy faced during the last eurocrisis. DiEM25 on Merkel Macron Announcement 19 MAY 2020:
There is an important geopolitical consideration in play with the "Merkron" proposal, as Wolfgang Münchau explains in China is pitting EU countries against each otherFinancial Times 06/24/2020:
China has shown remarkable skill in playing EU countries off against one another — for example in the race to develop 5G mobile networks. But this is just the beginning. China is well on the way to emerge as the most influential external power for the EU.
China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a project of long-term infrastructure investment spanning the Eurasian continent, lies at the heart of China’s global industrial strategy. EU governments understand this well. The Franco-German proposal for the €500bn coronavirus recovery fund includes a specific demand for an industrial policy to protect Europe against investments by third countries in strategic sectors. Yet such a strategy would pose problems for Italy, the likely main beneficiary of future Chinese investment in Europe. [my emphasis]
And Münchau's Eurointelligence looks more closely at the smoke and mirrors involved (Why it is not €500bn 05/29/2020):
When we read through the official document for yesterday's briefing, we were perplexed that the numbers did not add up - at least not in an obvious way. Further study of the proposal has revealed to us the reason why. The European Commission's claim that €500bn of the €750bn package comes in the form of grants is misleading. A more correct assessment is €400bn, which includes the €310bn grant element in the recovery plan and various bits and bobs, including an increase in structural funds. But it also includes components which the EU classifies as grants but whose ultimate incarnation is a loan. This is the Commission's old Juncker-fund reflex. It starts off by taking some real money and then leveraging it into a large loan. Whether this works or not is beside the point. Economically, this is not a fiscal impulse because it relates to claims that must be ultimately repaid. [my emphasis]
Europintelligence also argues that this is a clumsy attempt to backdoor a transfer-union function that really pertains to the specific needs of the eurozone:
... will the package survive the onslaught of the frugal four? The EU will need the consent of each of them to move ahead. They each will extract a price. On a per-capita basis, the frugal four are among the five largest net contributors to the EU budget. Leif Pagrotzky, a former Swedish economics minister, made the argument in Dagens Nyheter that Sweden should not veto the recovery fund, but argue that it is a eurozone-only instrument and Sweden should not take part in it. We agree with that argument. There is a lot of muddled thinking in Brussels about the nature of the monetary union, which is one of the reasons why the eurozone is stuck in a perma-crisis. The recovery fund is an economic necessity that arises as a direct result of countries having locked themselves into a permanent monetary union. It is not another regional aid programme.
The Dutch and the Austrians will have different objectives. We don't think they will want to veto the package, but the net economic gain for the EU as a whole is likely to be reduced through rebates for these countries. For example, if non-eurozone countries were allowed to opt out from the recovery fund, the refinancing burden on the remaining countries would increase, which in turn would reduce the extent of the fiscal transfer that is built into the package. [my emphasis]
Wolfgang Münchaus Eurointelligence argumentiert und greift einen Artikel von Erik Jones über die aktuellen Spannungen in der EU auf (What does European integration look like 30.04.2020):
Was jetzt im Vergleich zu 2007-2009 noch schlimmer ist, ist ein divergierendes Gefühl der Dringlichkeit. Die Situation in Italien ist derzeit verzweifelt, doch die EU geht auf die übliche Weise mit der Dose nach unten. Was wie ein Akt der Integration aus dem Norden aussieht, kontroverserweise, wird als Prozess des Zerfalls im Süden betrachtet. Die EU könnte sogar die formelle Integration durch eine weitere Runde von Vertragsreformen vorantreiben, doch das Gefühl des Zerfalls könnte zunehmen. Integration und Zerfall können gleichzeitig erfolgen. Jones argumentiert, dass der Sinn einer weiteren Integration nicht der Aufbau von Institutionen sein sollte, sondern die Unterstützung derjenigen, die durch die Lösung von drei aufeinanderfolgenden Krisen in 13 Jahren zurückgelassen wurden. [meine Hervorhebungen]
(Alle Übertragungen aus dem Englischen in diesem Beitrag sind meine.)
Ein kreditbasiertes Stabilisierungsprogramm, wie es die Europäische Kommission zur Unterstützung der nationalen Arbeitslosensysteme zur Verfügung gestellt hat, oder das von der Europäischen Investitionsbank [EIB] zur Unterstützung kleiner und mittlerer Unternehmen bereitgestellte, kann den relativen Druck sehr kurzfristig lindern, aber es kann den finanziellen Kontext nicht umgestalten. Ebenso wenig kann ein Notkredit an die nationalen Regierungen zur Unterstützung der Finanzierung der Gesundheitsversorgung aus dem Europäischen Stabilitätsmechanismus [ESM] gewährt werden.
Solche Instrumente lösen einen Teil des Drucks frei, der die Lage verschlimmern könnte. Tatsache ist jedoch, dass es für italienische Unternehmen schwieriger sein wird, den Shutdown zu überleben, als es für ihre deutschen Kollegen der Fall sein wird, ebenso wie es für italienische Unternehmen teurer sein wird, ihre letztendliche Erholung zu finanzieren. Die wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen in den beiden Ländern werden auseinandergehen, und die beiden Volkswirtschaften werden aufgrund dieser finanziellen Unterschiede weniger eng zusammenarbeiten.
Gleichzeitig werden alle Bemühungen des italienischen Staates, seine Haushaltslage wieder ins Gleichgewicht zu bringen, damit die italienischen Staatsfinanzen denen in Deutschland ähnlicher erscheinen, die Divergenz nur noch verschärfen. Es mag starke Argumente dafür geben, warum diese Aktionen notwendig sind, und erklären, wie die Italiener sich an ihren eigenen Stiefeln hochziehen sollten, aber diese Argumente ändern nichts daran, dass dies der Zerfall ist, vor allem, wenn man sie von Italien aus betrachtet. [meine Hervorhebungen]
There are wars, rumors of wars, and major instability in the Greater Middle East. This has produced millions of refugees headed toward Europe.
Austria’s then Foreign Minister and current Chancellor Sebastian “Basti” Kurz claimed to have solved the 2015-16 acute phase of the refugee flow that xenophobic politicians (including him) successfully exploited by “closing the Balkan route”. At best, Basti’s “Balkan route” negotiations played a small supplementary role next to Angela Merkel’s negotiations with Turkey: Deutsche Welle provides description and analysis of that deal, which is still in effect: The EU-Turkey refugee agreement: A review 18.03.2018; Barbara Wesel, The EU's grubby and dangerous deal with Turkey 18.03.2016.
As Barbara Wesel rightly describes it, Merkel’s Turkey deal “It effectively outsources the protection and care of the majority of refugees from the Middle East to Turkey.”
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) notes currently on its website (accessed 01/24/2020):
Turkey continues to host the largest number of refugees worldwide, with close to 4.1 million refugees, including 3.7 million Syrians and nearly 400,000 asylum-seekers and refugees of other nationalities. Turkish legislation provides people in need of international protection with a broad range of rights upon registration with the authorities. Some protection gaps are nonetheless observed in the implementation of the legal framework, largely due to the scale of the refugee response.
The main challenges remain the pressure on national resources and the availability of services for refugees and host communities. While state institutions are addressing these challenges, the protracted nature of the refugee situation has drawn public attention to the social impact of the refugees’ presence.
Of course, Middle Eastern countries are already absorbing refugees from conflicts in the region. And Libya in North Africa plays a particular role. Also from UNHCR (accessed 01/24/2020):
In Libya, an estimated 823,000 people need humanitarian assistance, according to the 2018 Humanitarian Needs Overview (HNO). Internally displaced people (IDPs), refugees and asylum-seekers are amongst the most vulnerable, with limited or no access to basic commodities and essential services. Political instability and violent clashes have generated ongoing displacement and created a very challenging operational environment for UNHCR. It is expected that the protection environment in Libya will remain restricted and will likely deteriorate even further.
UNHCR estimates that 4,500 people are detained in Libya, out of whom 2,500 are of concern to UNHCR. The condition of refugees and migrants in detention remains of grave concern and identifying solutions for the most vulnerable is a key priority in 2020. In addition, there are over 300,000 IDPs, of whom 128,000 have been newly displaced since clashes restarted in Tripoli in April 2019, and there are more than 447,000 IDP returnees. While high-level negotiations are underway to end conflict and encourage a resumption of the peace process, UNHCR is prepared to respond to humanitarian needs in 2020.
During Muammar Gaddafi’s rule, Libya was certainly no model of enlightened governance or a country where human rights were scrupulously protected. But it had absorbed and employed large numbers of African refugees fleeing military conflicts or disastrous economic conditions in their own countries.
But when civil war broke out and the US, Britain, and France intervened militarily to overthrow Gaddafi’s government, that function was radically reduced. And so more of the refugees that Libya could previously absorb head toward Europe, often in dangerous sea journeys in rickety vessels. There are refugee camps in Libya, set up partially in collaboration with EU countries, and they have been poorly managed, i.e., serious neglect and crimes including rape and some people being literally sold into slavery.
The Libya and Turkey aspects of the issue have converged even more lately with Turkey’s military intervention in the ongoing civil war and the international negotiations seeking a ceasefire in which Turkey is now necessarily a key participant. (Daniel Brössler, Erdoğan ist eine zentrale Figur im Libyen-Drama gewordenSüddeutsche Zeitung 24.01.2020)
Turkey justified its recent invasion of northern Syria as necessary to repatriate some of the Syrian refugees they were hosting. But Turkey used that as an excuse for “ethnic cleansing” of Kurds out of that region. But the 2016 Merkel-Erdoğan refugee agreement limits the EU’s ability to challenge military misadventures by Turkey in Syria or Libya because Turkey can credibly threaten to release large refugee flows into the EU. (Turkey lashes out at EU over refugee deal ahead of Merkel visitDeutsche Welle 23.01.2020)
In 2016, Merkel negotiated a refugee deal with Turkey to prevent migrants from continuing their journey to the EU. Erdogan had repeatedly threatened in the past to cancel the agreement.
Im Zentrum des Flüchtlingsdeals der EU mit der Türkei steht ein Tauschhandel: Die EU darf alle Migranten, die illegal auf die griechischen Inseln übergesetzt haben und kein Asyl erhalten, in die Türkei zurückschicken. Im Gegenzug kann für jeden zurückgeschickten Syrer ein anderer Syrer aus der Türkei legal in die EU einreisen. Es wurde zudem vereinbart, dass die EU sechs Milliarden Euro für die Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen syrischer Flüchtlinge in der Türkei zahlt.
At the heart of the EU's refugee deal with Turkey is a barter deal: the EU is allowed to send back to Turkey all migrants who have illegally transferred to the Greek islands and are not granted asylum. In return, for every Syrian returned, another Syrian from Turkey can legally enter the EU. It was also agreed that the EU would pay €6 billion to improve the living conditions of Syrian refugees in Turkey. [my translation from the German]
In other words, a massive increase in refugees coming into the EU comparable to that of 2015-16 can still happen. And likely will. And it’s very difficult to predict that. Erdoğan’s international ambitions, an escalation of the US-Iran conflict, serious economic problems are all things that could make that happen.
It does not appear to me that the EU is any better prepared today to deal effectively with such a recurrence than it was in 2015. They should be. But if anything, the nasty political battles related to immigration and refugees has made an effective collective EU response more difficult. The dominant EU narrative that each member country should promote its own national “competitiveness” also creates an every-country-for-themselves response to disruptions which works against EU cooperation and solidarity.
As mentioned at the start of Part 1, the EU needs an immigration policy based on (1) a positive rather than defensive immigration policy based on the understanding that EU countries all need significant numbers of immigrants for the foreseeable future, larger than the current supply; and, (2) a refugee policy that is based on an allocation of refugees among all EU countries, i.e., giving up the “Dublin system”.
When applying the Dublin rules, the country of arrival is, in most cases, identified as the one responsible for the asylum application.
The vast majority of arrivals are currently registered in just a few Member States (e.g. Greece and Italy), putting the asylum systems of these countries of first entry under immense pressure. This is not a fair distribution of responsibility.
The current system, in other words, puts by far the greatest burden for dealing with the refugee flow out of the Greater Middle East and Libya falls on Greece, Italy, and non-EU member Turkey.
Es gibt Kriege, Kriegsgerüchte und große Instabilität im Nahen Osten. Das hat Millionen von Flüchtlingen auf den Weg nach Europa geführt.
Österreichs damaliger Außenminister und jetziger Bundeskanzler Sebastian "Basti" Kurz und andere fremdenfeindliche Politiker nutzten die akute Phase des Flüchtlingsstroms 2015/16 erfolgreich aus. Und Kurz selbst behauptete, dieses Problem durch "Schließung der Balkanroute" gelöst zu haben. Bestenfalls spielten Kurz' "Balkanroute"-Verhandlungen neben Angela Merkels Verhandlungen mit der Türkei eine kleine Zusatzrolle. (Deutsche Welle beschreibt und analysiert diesen Deal, der noch in Kraft ist: The EU-Turkey refugee agreement: A review 18.03.2018; Barbara Wesel, The EU's grubby and dangerous deal with Turkey 18.03.2016)
Wie Barbara Wesel es zu Recht beschreibt, "wird Merkels Türkei-Deal effektiv den Schutz und die Betreuung der Mehrheit der Flüchtlinge aus dem Nahen Osten in die Türkei auslagert". (meine Übertragung aus dem Englischen)
Das UN-Flüchtlingshilfswerk (UNHCR) nimmt derzeit auf seiner Website (abgerufen am 24.01.2020) mit:
Die Türkei beherbergt nach wie vor die weltweit größte Zahl von Flüchtlingen mit fast 4,1 Millionen Flüchtlingen, darunter 3,7 Millionen Syrer und fast 400.000 Asylsuchende und Flüchtlinge anderer Nationalitäten. Die türkische Gesetzgebung bietet Menschen, die internationalen Schutz benötigen, bei der Registrierung bei den Behörden ein breites Spektrum von Rechten. Dennoch werden bei der Umsetzung des Rechtsrahmens einige Schutzlücken festgestellt, die vor allem auf das Ausmaß der Reaktion auf Flüchtlinge zurückzuführen sind.
Die größten Herausforderungen bleiben der Druck auf die nationalen Ressourcen und die Verfügbarkeit von Dienstleistungen für Flüchtlinge und Aufnahmegemeinschaften. Während sich staatliche Institutionen diesen Herausforderungen stellen, hat die langwierige Flüchtlingssituation die öffentliche Aufmerksamkeit auf die sozialen Auswirkungen der Anwesenheit der Flüchtlinge gelenkt. [meine Übertragung aus dem Englischen]
Natürlich nehmen die Länder des Nahen Ostens bereits Flüchtlinge aus Konflikten in der Region auf. Und Libyen in Nordafrika spielt eine besondere Rolle. Ebenfalls vom UNHCR (abgerufen am 24.01.2020):
In Libyen benötigen schätzungsweise 823.000 Menschen humanitäre Hilfe, wie aus der Übersicht über den humanitären Bedarf 2018 (HNO) hervorgeht. Binnenvertriebene, Flüchtlinge und Asylsuchende gehören zu den am stärksten gefährdeten Menschen, die nur begrenzten oder keinen Zugang zu Grundgütern und grundlegenden Dienstleistungen haben. Politische Instabilität und gewaltsame Zusammenstöße haben zu anhaltender Vertreibung und einem sehr herausfordernden operativen Umfeld für das UNHCR geschaffen. Es wird erwartet, dass das Schutzumfeld in Libyen eingeschränkt bleibt und sich wahrscheinlich noch weiter verschlechtern wird.
Das UNHCR schätzt, dass 4.500 Menschen in Libyen festgehalten werden, von denen 2.500 das UNHCR beunruhigen. Der Zustand der inhaftierten Flüchtlinge und Migranten ist nach wie vor äußerst besorgniserregend, und die Suche nach Lösungen für die Schwächsten ist eine der wichtigsten Prioritäten im Jahr 2020. Darüber hinaus gibt es über 300.000 Binnenvertriebene, von denen 128.000 seit dem Wiederbeginn der Zusammenstöße in Tripolis im April 2019 neu vertrieben wurden, und es gibt mehr als 447.000 IDP [Internal Displaced Persons] Rückkehrer. Während Verhandlungen auf hoher Ebene laufen, um Konflikte zu beenden und eine Wiederaufnahme des Friedensprozesses zu fördern, ist das UNHCR bereit, im Jahr 2020 auf humanitäre Bedürfnisse zu reagieren. [meine Übertragung aus dem Englischen]
Während der Herrschaft von Muammar al-Gaddafi war Libyen sicherlich kein Modell einer aufgeklärten Regierungsführung oder ein Land, in dem die Menschenrechte gewissenhaft geschützt wurden. Aber sie hatte eine große Zahl afrikanischer Flüchtlinge aufgenommen und beschäftigt, die vor militärischen Konflikten oder katastrophalen wirtschaftlichen Bedingungen in ihren eigenen Ländern geflohen waren.
Doch als der Bürgerkrieg ausbrach und die USA, Großbritannien und Frankreich militärisch intervenierten, um Gaddafis Regierung zu stürzen, wurde diese Funktion radikal reduziert. Und so mehr der Flüchtlinge, die Libyen früher aufnehmen konnte, geht es nach Europa, oft in gefährlichen Seereisen in klapprigen Schiffen. Es gibt Flüchtlingslager in Libyen, die teilweise in Zusammenarbeit mit EU-Ländern eingerichtet wurden, und sie wurden schlecht verwaltet, d. h. schwere Vernachlässigung und Verbrechen, einschließlich Vergewaltigungen, und einige Menschen wurden buchstäblich in die Sklaverei verkauft.
Die Aspekte Libyens und der Türkei haben sich in letzter Zeit noch mehr mit der militärischen Intervention der Türkei im laufenden Bürgerkrieg und den internationalen Verhandlungen über einen Waffenstillstand angenähert, an denen die Türkei nun notwendigerweise ein wichtiger Teilnehmer ist. (Daniel Brössler, Erdoğan ist eine zentrale Figur im Libyen-Drama gewordenSüddeutsche Zeitung 24.01.2020)
Die Türkei rechtfertigte die jüngste Invasion Nordsyriens als notwendig, um einige der syrischen Flüchtlinge, die sie aufgenommen hatten, zurückzuholen. Aber die Türkei benutzte dies als Entschuldigung für die "ethnische Säuberung" von Kurden aus dieser Region. Doch das Flüchtlingsabkommen von Merkel und Erdogan aus dem Jahr 2016 schränkt die Fähigkeit der EU ein, militärische Missgeschicke der Türkei in Syrien oder Libyen in Frage zu stellen, weil die Türkei glaubwürdig damit drohen kann, große Flüchtlingsströme in die EU freizugeben. (Turkey lashes out at EU over refugee deal ahead of Merkel visitDeutsche Welle 23.01.2020)
Im Jahr 2016 hatte Merkel mit der Türkei einen Flüchtlingsdeal ausgehandelt, der Migranten von der Weiterreise in die EU abhalten soll. Erdogan hatte in der Vergangenheit wiederholt gedroht, das Abkommen aufzukündigen.
Im Zentrum des Flüchtlingsdeals der EU mit der Türkei steht ein Tauschhandel: Die EU darf alle Migranten, die illegal auf die griechischen Inseln übergesetzt haben und kein Asyl erhalten, in die Türkei zurückschicken. Im Gegenzug kann für jeden zurückgeschickten Syrer ein anderer Syrer aus der Türkei legal in die EU einreisen. Es wurde zudem vereinbart, dass die EU sechs Milliarden Euro für die Verbesserung der Lebensbedingungen syrischer Flüchtlinge in der Türkei zahlt.
Und diese Kriege und Gerüchte über Kriege – und die US-Sanktionen, die den Weg für einen Krieg mit dem Iran ebnen – führen zu neuen Flüchtlingen, die auf Europa zusteuern. (Erin Cunningham and Mohammad Mahdi Sultani, Trump’s sanctions on Iran are helping fuel a new refugee crisis - in TurkeyWashington Post 01/24/2020)
Mit anderen Worten, ein massiver Anstieg der Flüchtlinge, die in die EU kommen, vergleichbar mit denen von 2015-16, kann immer noch passieren. Und wahrscheinlich wird. Und es ist sehr schwierig, das vorherzusagen. Erdoğans internationale Ambitionen, eine Eskalation des Konflikts zwischen den USA und dem Iran, ernste wirtschaftliche Probleme sind alles Ereignisse, die dies bewirken könnten.
Mir scheint, dass die EU heute nicht besser darauf vorbereitet ist, mit einer solchen Wiederholung effektiv umzugehen als 2015. Sie sollten es sein. Aber wenn überhaupt, haben die fiesen politischen Kämpfe im Zusammenhang mit Einwanderung und Flüchtlingen eine effektive gemeinsame Reaktion der EU erschwert. Das vorherrschende Narrativ der EU, dass jedes Mitgliedsland seine eigene nationale "Wettbewerbsfähigkeit" fördern sollte, schafft auch eine für jedes Land bestehende Antwort auf Störungen, die gegen die Zusammenarbeit und Solidarität der EU wirken.
Wie zu Beginn von Teil 1 erwähnt, braucht die EU eine Einwanderungspolitik, die auf (1) einer positiven und nicht auf einer defensiven Immigrationspolitik beruht, die auf der Auffassung beruht, dass die EU-Länder in absehbarer Zeit eine erhebliche Zahl von Einwanderern benötigen, die größer sind als die aktuelle Nummer; und (2) eine Flüchtlingspolitik, die auf einer Verteilung von Flüchtlingen auf alle EU-Länder beruht, d. h. das "Dublin-System" aufgeben.
Bei der Anwendung der Dublin-Regeln wird das Ankunftsland in den meisten Fällen als das für den Asylantrag zuständige Land identifiziert.
Die überwiegende Mehrheit der Ankünfte wird derzeit nur in wenigen Mitgliedstaaten registriert (z. B. Griechenland und Italien), wodurch die Asylsysteme dieser Erstaufnahmeländer unter immensem Druck stehen. Das ist keine gerechte Verteilung der Verantwortung. [meine Übertragung aus dem Englischen]
Mit anderen Worten, das derzeitige System stellt die bei weitem größte Last für den Umgang mit dem Flüchtlingsstrom aus dem Nahen Osten und Libyen dar, fällt auf Griechenland, Italien und das Nicht-EU-Mitglied-Land Türkei.
The European Union’s immigration situation faces two major problems, both now and for the foreseeable future.
One is that the EU needs more people. And that applies to most if not all member countries, not just to less wealthy ones like Hungary and Rumania, whose populations have been shrinking due to emigration of younger native-born people.
The other is that Europe’s near neighbors to the south have experienced nearly two decades of war and instability, with no near end in sight: the Middle East and North Africa, and Afghanistan as well, from which refugees make their way towards the EU countries.
In light of the 2015-6 refugee crisis (or acute phase of a much longer crisis), two major policies are needed: systematic recruitment and admission of immigrants for jobs currently going unfilled, whether the shortage is due to lack of skilled workers or because the jobs are so unpleasant they can’t get enough workers for them: and, a plan for fair sharing of refugees among all EU countries at an early stage, not only after asylum has been granted.
Immigration policies can be very complex. But the EU needs both those sets of policies and doesn’t have them now.
It’s a worldwide phenomenon that as countries become wealthier and more urbanized and decent health care becomes more available, the birth rate goes down. The replacement rate, the fertility rate at which the population will remain stable in numbers from one generation to the next, is generally taken to be 2.1 children per woman.
Austria 1.5
Belgium 1.8
Bulgaria 1.6
Croatia 1.4
Cyprus 1.3
Czechia 1.6 (Visegrad Group)
Denmark 1.8
Estonia 1.6
Finland 1.8
France 1.9
Germany 1.5
Greece 1.4
Hungary 1.5 (Visegrad Group)
Ireland 2.0
Italy 1.3
Latvia 1.5
Lithuania 1.6
Luxembourg 1.6
Malta 1.5
Netherlands 1.8
Poland 1.3 (Visegrad Group)
Portugal 1.4
Romania 1.4
Slovakia 1.6 (Visegrad Group)
Slovenia 1.6
Spain 1.5
Sweden 1.8
UK 1.7
All of them are below the replacement fertility rate of 2.1.
I’ve flagged the Visegrad states, which have been particularly insistent on keeping refugees out of the EU. Visegrad Group member Poland is tied with tiny Cyprus as having the lowest. We should note here that the fertility rate won’t match one-to-one with national wealth measures. But all EU countries are already past the point where the fertility rate has dropped below 2.1.
Fertility rates below the replacement rate mean that over the coming decades, their populations will shrink. This is often discussed in the news in terms of how an aging population presents new challenges for country’s health care and government social insurance.
But it’s also generally assumed that a shrinking population is a danger to economic growth.
Forget the prophecies saying overpopulation will starve the planet. The human race is approaching the point where it’s no longer reproducing enough to expand the global headcount. In the world’s biggest economies -- the U.S., China, Japan and Germany -- it’s already happening or will soon. Economists say these countries could see slower economic growth unless they increase their working-age populations by accepting immigrants, possibly from regions with higher fertility rates, like parts of Asia and Africa. Lower fertility rates -- the number of live births per woman -- could also threaten safety-net programs like pensions and health care. [my emphasis]
In the US and Europe, the only reason it would threaten “safety-net programs” is if governments are unwilling to tax the wealth at a reasonable rate. But until those countries transition to a green economy in which economic prosperity is not linked to a growing population fueling growing consumption, a growing population is needed.
It was interesting to hear what Austrian Chancellor Sebastian “Basti” Kurz (ÖVP) himself recently said at the Davos World Economic Forum (A Conversation with Sebastian Kurz, Federal Chancellor of Austria 24.01.2020):
I recently had a discussion in which it was philosophized about how the post-growth society, and, can it [it] actually be good for a country when there is no more economic growth and if, yes, we still are satisfied, and would it not be even better in any case to measure the satisfaction of the population and not economic growth.
So, that all always sounds so beautiful and so romantic. I can only say that in Europe we have some of the oldest societies in the world. I think Germany has the second oldest society after Japan.
So, satisfaction doesn’t pay any pensions, okay? If we do not have growth, if we do not succeed in remaining economically competitive, that is, the European Union, because then its also Good Night welfare state and Good Night European achievements. (after 25:20 in the video)
The relation of birth and fertility rates has been studied in the context of Malthusian claims that low growth in poor countries is caused to a large if not near-exclusive extent by high population growth. This notion has been effectively refuted for, oh, the last two centuries. But it is still remarkably persistence because it is an effective distraction from maldistribution of world income and massive exploitation of poor countries by wealthier ones.
The European far right recognizes the decline of the population but try to use it as a justification for their racist, anti-Semitic “great replacement” theory. Europe’s current model authoritarian Viktor Orban is trying to promote a higher birth rate, framing in racist-nationalistic terms (Hungary to provide free fertility treatment to boost populationBBC News 01/10/2020):
Hungary will provide free in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment to couples at state-run clinics, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has announced.
He said fertility was of "strategic importance". Last month his government took over Hungary's fertility clinics.
Mr Orban, a right-wing nationalist, has long advocated a "procreation over immigration" approach to deal with demographic decline.
The country's population has been falling steadily for four decades.
The idea that Hungary will get from a fertility rate of 1,5 to 2,1 or higher in any foreseeable future is nonsense. It would take forcing women out of the workforce and into a real Handmaid’s Tale kind of society in which women were basically only allowed to breed and raise children. And even that probably wouldn’t get it to the replacement rate. (If there is a side benefit of some improvement’s in women’s reproductive health care, that will be a desirable if unintended consequence.)
It’s also important to remember that the relationship between economic growth and declining population isn’t instantaneous. It doesn’t mean that if in 2020, Hungary’s population declines from 2019 that Hungary’s GDP or per capital income will decline from 2019 to 2020. Obviously, business cycles still exist.
And the fact that population decline does not manifest its effects instantly means that it’s difficult to make it a focus of short-term politics. We are seeing dramatically and worldwide now how the difficulty of prioritizing long-term policies against climate change is working out. That is, not well.
In Part 2, I will look specifically at how the new coalition government in Austria is approaching the long-term challenges of the fertility rates and refugees. (Or not doing so.)
