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European Union Ministers Approve Plan to Distribute Refugees Plan on Migrants Strains the Limits of Europe’s Unity
(about 4 hours later)
BRUSSELS — European Union ministers approved a plan on Tuesday that compels member countries to take in 120,000 migrants seeking refuge on the Continent, despite strong objections from four dissident nations in Central Europe. LONDON — After weeks of indecision, the European Union voted on Tuesday to distribute 120,000 asylum seekers among member states, a plan meant to display unity in the face of the largest movement of refugees on the Continent since World War II.
The plan to apportion the migrants, still only a small fraction of those flowing into Europe, was approved by home affairs and interior ministers of the member countries after a vigorous debate. Instead, the decision — forced through by a majority vote, over the bitter objections of four eastern members — did as much to underline the bloc’s widening divisions, even over a modest step that barely addresses the crisis.
In a departure from normal procedures that emphasize consensus, particularly on questions of national sovereignty, the ministers took a formal vote. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia voted no. Finland abstained. Nearly half a million migrants and refugees have arrived in Europe this year, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, a number that is only expected to rise.
As a legal matter, however, the plan is final and must be carried out even if those countries oppose it. The crisis has tested the limits of Europe’s ability to forge consensus on one of the most divisive issues to confront the union since the fall of Communism. It has set right-wing nationalist and populist politicians against Pan-European humanitarians, who have portrayed the crisis in stark moral terms.
The migrant crisis confronting Europe will be discussed further on Wednesday by leaders from across the 28-member bloc, who will gather here for an emergency summit meeting. “We would have preferred to have adoption by consensus, but we did not manage to achieve that,” Jean Asselborn, the foreign minister of Luxembourg, said after a meeting of home affairs and interior ministers.
The crisis has tested the limits of Europe’s ability to forge consensus on one of the most divisive issues to confront the union since the fall of communism. It has set right-wing politicians, including those who govern Hungary, against Pan-European humanitarians, who have portrayed the crisis in stark moral terms. Leaders from across the 28-member bloc will meet in Brussels on Wednesday for further discussions on how to respond to the crisis.
“We would have preferred to have adoption by consensus, but we did not manage to achieve that,” Jean Asselborn, the foreign minister of Luxembourg, said after the meeting. He urged the countries that had voted no to comply with the decision. “I have no doubt they will implement these decisions fully,” he said. Mr. Asselborn said even countries that voted against the distribution of asylum seekers — the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia — must comply. “I have no doubt they will implement these decisions fully,” he said.
Mr. Asselborn generated some confusion earlier on Tuesday when he said that the member states had agreed to take their allocations of migrants on a “voluntary” basis. Pressed on whether the countries that dissented would also have to accept the migrants, he responded, “Nobody has the right not to agree.” But with the prime minister of Slovakia immediately threatening to defy the plan, the outcome was more than an example of the bloc’s inability to coordinate its policies — formidable enough through the long crisis over the euro and Greece’s debt.
Bernard Cazeneuve, the French interior minister, played down the lack of consensus. “It was very important for us that everyone would participate in this plan,” Mr. Cazeneuve said after the meeting at a news conference with his German counterpart, Thomas de Maizière. The decision was in the “European spirit,” Mr. Cazeneuve said, noting that an “overwhelming majority” of nations had supported it. The response to the refugee crisis so far has also raised profound questions about a failure of European principles, a trembling of the pillars on which the bloc was founded more than 20 years ago.
But there were early signs of resistance to the plan. “I’m very surprised by this unprecedented decision,” Slovakia’s interior minister, Robert Kalinak, said after the vote. The Czech prime minister, Bohuslav Sobotka, said his government would “reject any attempt to introduce some permanent mechanism of redistributing refugees.” The European Union’s reputation, and its faith in Brussels, have suffered in the past few months, with sharp and vocal divisions among member states and continuing doubts about Greek economic sustainability.
The idea behind the plan — backed by Germany and France, the dominant powers in Europe — is to relieve the pressure on front-line nations like Italy and Greece, which migrants from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa have been flooding. Germany has estimated that it will give refuge to as many as one million people this year. The migrant crisis “risks bursting the E.U. at its weak seams,” said Stefano Stefanini, a former senior Italian ambassador now based in Brussels. “It’s more dangerous than the Greek drama and more serious than the euro, because it challenges fundamental European accomplishments and beliefs.”
The dispute has highlighted a political divide between wealthier countries like Germany and Sweden, which have emphasized multiculturalism and humanitarian aid, and poorer countries from the former Communist bloc, like Hungary and Slovakia, that are alarmed at the economic and social challenges of absorbing so many migrants. With Tuesday’s vote, he said, “the cleavages only get deeper.”
Another factor that had been holding up a deal was the reluctance of a number of countries to hand over control of immigration to the European Commission, the Brussels-based executive agency for the European Union, which drew up the plans for the mandatory system. In practical terms, those achievements are most manifest in the bloc’s single currency and the freedom of movement within the borderless, passport-free zone known as the Schengen area. Both are being put to the test as never before.
Diplomats had failed to agree on a draft accord on Monday but met again on Tuesday, before the interior ministers’ meeting. As with the euro, borderless travel was pushed ahead by the European Union as an essentially political idea, without Brussels having created the rules and institutions capable of coherently maintaining and enforcing it.
The decision to endorse the plan on Tuesday, despite a lack of broad agreement, could exacerbate friction among European Union leaders that has already led to the reintroduction of border controls by some countries. And as with the euro, the chaos over the refugees has raised questions about not only how the European Union functions but what it stands for, not least its aspirations to balance justice and security.
One lift on Tuesday for supporters of the plan was Poland’s decision to vote yes. It had previously criticized the proposal, but its former prime minister, Donald Tusk, has been a strong advocate for a European solution to the crisis. “People want to see both compassion and competence from the E.U., and those two things should not be at odds,” said David Miliband, a former British foreign minister and now director of the International Rescue Committee, a nongovernmental agency that helps refugees. “If the E.U. is incompetent, compassion is not enough.”
Mr. Tusk — now the president of the European Council, which convened the meeting scheduled for Wednesday — was expected to urge the leaders to discuss expanding cooperation with Turkey so that refugees there are given adequate care and shelter and are dissuaded from trying to enter the European Union. Formed as a peaceful, humane response to the blood bath of World War II, the bloc has always prided itself on its commitment to decency, including a traditional welcome among member states to accepting refugees.
“We must help Syrian refugees to a better life closer to their homes,” Mr. Tusk wrote on Twitter on Sunday. But the surge of migrants has shredded that welcome and challenged the principles — and many of the practical benefits — of the Schengen zone. Austria, Germany, Hungary and Slovenia have all re-established border controls, at least temporarily, in recent weeks.
He was also expected to encourage a discussion about expanding fingerprinting and creating more reception centers in Greece and Italy. That could turn these so-called hot spots where migrants would be gathered into full-fledged refugee camps. There is a growing recognition that Schengen can function only if its outermost borders are secure — as well as mounting evidence that they are not. Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council and a former prime minister of Poland, wrote European Union leaders last weekend that “we as Europeans are currently not able to manage our common external borders.”
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, urged governments on Tuesday to substantially increase funding for Frontex, the European Union’s border control agency. Piled atop existing European concerns about low growth, high unemployment and high deficits, the migrant crisis is only more fodder for growing nationalist, populist and anti-European Union parties in countries like Britain, Denmark, France and Sweden.
“This is not the time for business as usual,” he said. “If you really want to help these people, you have to put your money where your mouth is.” “The European norm that is challenged is the idea of one for all, all for one, under the rubric of solidarity,” Mr. Miliband said. “There is a significant question about whether Europe pulls together in the face of a fundamental challenge, or it cleaves apart.”
One of the most intransigent countries in the migration crisis has been Hungary. It has built a razor-wire fence along its border with Serbia and is fortifying its border with Croatia. It has also granted its army extra powers to deal with migrants, including allowing the use of tear gas, rubber bullets and other weapons, provided no lethal force is used. A Europe “defined by a beggar-my-neighbor race to the bottom was precisely what the E.U. was created to prevent,” he said.
Hungary has resisted the relocation plan, even though an earlier proposal would have allowed the country to move an estimated 54,000 migrants from its territory to other European Union members. Volker Stanzel, a former German ambassador and senior official, said the migrant crisis was “a fundamental challenge, but not an existential one.” At the moment, “the internal fighting is ever more heated by the day,” he said.
The Hungarian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the foreign minister, Peter Szijjarto, intended to present to Turkey a Hungarian proposal calling for the European Union to finance refugee camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. The hope is that if the bloc works to improve the conditions in those countries, the refugees will be less likely to undertake the difficult journey to Europe. But it remains to be seen how a proposal by Hungary, a country that has railed against a perceived threat of a Muslim invasion, will be received in Turkey, a majority-Muslim country that has hosted millions of the refugees. “We’re in a process that is ugly, that some people call ‘refugee poker,’ with everyone horse trading and fighting for their own skin, but doing so in the framework of existing European mechanisms,” Mr. Stanzel said.
The new plan to distribute 120,000 migrants follows a similarly contentious debate in June over how to deal with 40,000 migrants, most of them from Syria or Eritrea. That is true even in Germany, Europe’s most European-minded power, he said.
At first, Chancellor Angela Merkel was criticized for her silence on the refugees. She then won praise for humanitarian generosity by ignoring European Union rules and throwing open Germany’s borders to Syrian asylum seekers. But that commitment faded once she was challenged by the Christian Socialists, her party’s partners in Bavaria, which was bearing the brunt of the flow.
“Then the decision comes that Germany will have to reintroduce border controls, even on the border with France, and then all the other countries follow suit,” Mr. Stanzel said.
Solidarity is at risk, Mr. Stefanini, the former Italian ambassador, agreed.
“We talk about how when you join the E.U., you accept that you have to share responsibilities as well as advantages,” he said. “Countries like Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Hungary and some others react as if when they joined they didn’t sign up to share thousands of asylum seekers, or impose collective sanctions on Russia over Ukraine.”
“Once you join, all of a sudden you realize you can’t make all decisions on your own as before,” he said, “and that Schengen is great, but that you also lose control over your borders.”
The European Union “is not particularly good at dealing with the sort of crisis that demands quick action,” Mr. Stefanini said.
“The old European method is negotiations to seek consensus, and that takes time,” he said. “But here, as with Greece, you need quick decisions, you need to decide whether you do or you don’t. Instead, we’re wobbling along from the Greek crisis to this one, which is even more fundamental.”
Mr. Stanzel, the former German ambassador, said he was convinced that Europe would work out an arrangement, which will probably include reception centers in front-line countries like Greece, Hungary and Italy to feed, house and screen migrants and asylum seekers, and then distribute legitimate refugees to member countries.
Though forced to accept quotas for refugees, Eastern countries know that most of them will later travel to Germany or other countries in the Schengen area. Even if the Czechs are forced to take 5,000, “they know 3,000 of them will leave anyway — it’s cynical but it will work,” Mr. Stanzel said.
But in the longer term, he said, “it will be a big challenge to security over time, and to the police agencies, and to those who must integrate the refugees.”
There will also be a boon for the populist far-right, Mr. Stefanini said.
The National Front in France and the Northern League in Italy are “biding their time,” he said. To come out now against refugees in the face of German and public generosity would be a mistake, which the populists realize.
“So they say they’re for legitimate refugees but against an open door to Europe,” Mr. Stefanini said. “But there will be incidents and backlash, and then they will come out, and it will play into their hands.”