Fabric of Europe’s political centre is stretched by immigration issue

The Hungarian politician from prime minister Viktor Orban’s right-wing government was standing in front of a fleet of yellow buses. For the sake of the photo opportunity the mock route of the buses was to be from Roszke, a village on Hungary’s border with Serbia, to Brussels.
The recent stunt was to promote Orban’s plan to bus asylum seekers from Hungary to the doorsteps of the European Union institutions in the Belgian capital. The EU has been clashing with Budapest over how the central European country treats asylum seekers for years, as well as over Orban’s populist government undermining the rule of law and eroding other rights.
Back in 2020 the European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled Hungary’s hardline response to asylum seekers was breaking EU law. The Hungarian government recently missed a deadline to pay a €200 million fine imposed by the court over the breaches of asylum standards.
The dispute has prompted Orban to take a leaf from Republican governors in the US, who have been bussing migrants into Democratic cities such as New York and Washington DC. Hungary said it plans to transport asylum seekers who arrive at its borders to Brussels, although as of now no buses have left.
While relations between Budapest and other European leaders have been at an all-time low, the latest effort by Orban to poke Brussels in the eye has really raised hackles. If the plan to bus asylum seekers from one member state to another ever goes ahead, it would represent the crossing of another unprecedented juncture.
Much was made earlier this year of the EU’s migration and asylum pact, a sweeping overhaul to reform and toughen up asylum policy across the bloc. Countries have about a year and a half to introduce the changes, which will include giving officials powers to make more fast-track decisions on some asylum cases. Rather than the reforms taking the heat out of the migration debate, those on the extreme right have continued to use the issue to successfully tug at the stretching fabric of the political centre.
This week Germany announced that it would impose checks on all its national land borders for the next six months in an effort to reduce irregular migration. The dramatic decision follows a fatal knife attack in the western city of Solingen, where the alleged perpetrator was an unsuccessful asylum seeker. Even before the Solingen incident, German chancellor Olaf Scholz’s coalition had been under serious pressure from the centre right Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the far-right Alternative for Germany.
In France, Emmanuel Macron’s pick for prime minister, the former Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier, may only be able to remain in office by keeping Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally onside. Geert Wilders’s anti-immigrant party is part of the new right-wing coalition in the Netherlands and Austria’s far-right Freedom Party is leading the polls heading into a general election later this month. Anxiety about the rise of these nationalist, anti-immigrant parties has seen many EU countries push to go further to reduce the number of asylum seekers seeking protection in Europe.
You can expect to hear a lot more about plans to effectively outsource some of the asylum system to “third countries” outside the EU. Under the hard-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni, Italy is ploughing ahead with a scheme that will see thousands of its asylum seekers hosted in Albania while their claims are processed. The European Commission, which is the executive arm of the EU, will come under pressure in the coming years to allow others strike similar deals.
Alberto-Horst Neidhardt, an expert on asylum at the European Policy Centre, thinks that perhaps too much was made of the migration pact reforms at the time. The impression had been given that the EU had “turned a page” on asylum. The political fallout from the Solingen attack was the abrupt “end of the honeymoon”, he said.
German voters would want to see proof that the new border controls are cutting down the arrivals of irregular asylum seekers. “I think this sends a message that could come back to haunt the government … When the voters realise that the government has failed to live up to their expectations, who are they going to vote for?” There was also a fear that other countries, such as the Netherlands, could follow suit and impose emergency border restrictions, Neidhardt said.
[ German border checks the frustrating new normal in what was the heart of EU’s open-border Schengen areaOpens in new window ]
Delays waiting to cross borders in the previously seamless Schengen travel area would undermine one of the main practical benefits of the union for ordinary people. If harder border infrastructure starts to go up between EU member states, Orban will not be the only one to blame.