THE SYRIAN REFUGEE CRISIS: RISKS AND CHALLENGES

FOR THE EUROPEAN UNION

A Thesis

Presented to the MA Programme

of the OSCE Academy in Bishkek

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of

Master of Arts in Politics and Security

by

Kseniia Maiatskaia

December 2016

Copyright © Kseniia Maiatskaia 2016

All Rights Reserved

The OSCE Aca de my in B i sh ke k

STATEMENT OF THESIS APPROVAL

The MA Thesis of Kseniia Maiatskaia

has been approved by the following:

Payam Foroughi, Thesis Supervisor 7 December 2016

Date Approved

Shairbek Juraev, Defense Committee Chair 7 December 2016

Date Approved

Aigoul Abdoubaetova, Academic Coordinator 7 December 2016

Date Approved

Pál Dunay, OSCE Academy Director 7 December 2016

Date Approved

iii

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

This Thesis focuses on the effects of the ongoing ‘Syrian refugee crisis’ on the

integrity of the European integration project: the European Union (EU). With roots in

the European Community and conceived as an imperative to eliminate prospects of

new military conflicts between major European nations after World War Two, the EU

(formalized since 1993) has ended up being the fundamental institution of co-

operation among the European states on a broad spectrum of issues. However, the

engagement of the EU in the U.S.-led ‘global war on terror’, including military

interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya may have inadvertently destabilized the

said regions, including the encouragement of more wars (such as the Syrian civil

war), the expansion of new terror groups (such as the Islamic state of Iraq and Syria,

ISIS), and generated millions of refugees, a significant portion of whom have made

their way to Europe through land and sea routes. The EU, in turn, given other political

and economic issues affecting it, such as the Western-imposed Russian sanctions over

the Ukraine crisis, economic meltdown in Greece, and the successful vote on

secession by Britain from the EU (Brexit), appears to have failed to coherently

respond to the current refugee crisis facing the continent. The refugee influx has put

the EU’s integration project to a test and revealed intrinsic flaws in the EU’s institu-

tional and legislative arrangements, lack of mutual consent and solidarity among the

member states, and internal political cleavages within the Union. The refugee crisis

has also led to the escalation of centrifugal tendencies (suspension of the Schengen

Agreement and return to national border controls), solidification of Euroskeptic and

radical right-wing parties, and strengthening of an internal East-West division,

thereby endangering the smooth functioning of the very idea of European integration.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

STATEMENT OF THESIS APPROVAL .................................................................. ii

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ...................................................................................... iii

LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................... v

ABBREVIATIONS .................................................................................................. vi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ..................................................................................... vii

Chapters

I: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................ 1

Background to the problem ............................................................................ 2

Research questions......................................................................................... 7

Theoretical framework ................................................................................... 7

Hypotheses .................................................................................................... 8

Methodology and research design .................................................................. 8

Research significance..................................................................................... 9

II: LITERATURE REVIEW................................................................................... 10

A brief picture of the ‘Syrian refugee crisis’................................................. 11

EU’s policy towards the MENA region ........................................................ 12

Prior management of refugee crises ............................................................. 13

EU’s migration legislation ........................................................................... 15

Fueling rightist parties ................................................................................. 16

Farewell to Schengen? ................................................................................. 19

Unity in disunity .......................................................................................... 20

Conclusion ................................................................................................... 22

III: ANALYSIS AND HYPOTHESES TESTING .................................................. 23

Hypothesis 1: Analysis ................................................................................ 24

Hypothesis 2: Analysis ................................................................................ 34

Heightening centrifugal tendencies ................................................... 34

Solidification of Euroskeptic and radical right parties ....................... 42

The case of France’s Front National ................................................. 48

Germany’s Alternatives for Germany Party ...................................... 50

The ‘Brexit’ knock-on effect ............................................................ 55

Strengthening of internal East-West polarization .............................. 61

IV: CONCLUSIONS ............................................................................................... 68

BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................... 73

APPENDIX: LIST OF INTERVIEWS .................................................................... 79

v

LIST OF FIGURES

Figures

1: Main European migration routes ............................................................................ 2

2: Migrant fatalities in the Mediterranean Sea ............................................................ 3

3: Asylum seekers in the EU by national origin ......................................................... 5

4: Top countries by the number of the world’s refugees hosted .................................. 6

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ABBREVIATIONS

AfD Alternative for Germany

CSU Christian Social Union

CDU Christian Democratic Union

DPP Danish People’s Party

EMP Euro-Mediterranean Partnership

EU European Union

FDP Free Democratic Party

FN Front National

IOM International Organization for Migration

IOs International organizations

ISIS Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

MENA Middle East and North Africa

MEPs Members of the European Parliament

MSs Member states

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization

NGO Non-governmental organization

PiS Law and Justice Party

PVV Party for Freedom

SDP Social Democratic Party

UfM Union for Mediterranean

UKIP United Kingdom Independence Party

UN United Nations

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This Thesis is dedicated to my beloved family and friends who patiently and morally

supported me while studying at the OSCE Academy and then while writing the

Thesis.

I would like to express a sincere gratitude to my supervisor, Mr. Payam

Foroughi, who was guiding me all the way through, helping me with search for

sources and necessary information and answering my numerous questions very

patiently. Were it not for his guidance and assistance, this Thesis would not have been

possible.

I also wish to say thank you to the OSCE Academy and its staff for

encouraging me to grow professionally and personally and for helping me find new

friends and colleagues who will definitely stay with me and in my memory.

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I

INTRODUCTION

“Now listen you, people of NATO.

You’re bombing a wall which stood in

the way of African migration to Europe,

and in the way of Al Qaeda terrorists.

This wall was Libya. You’re breaking it.

You’re idiots, and you will burn in Hell

[due to] thousands of migrants from

Africa and for supporting Al Qaeda [who

will rush to your borders]. It will be so. I

never lie. And I do not lie now.”

—Muammar Gaddafi in response to

NATO’s support of Libya’s armed

opposition, 2011 (Spencer 2015)

Gaddafi’s last speech before he was brutally tortured and murdered by what can be

labeled as a ‘lynch mob’ in 2011 crudely addressed the threats of terrorism via

migration from North Africa. His words were prophetic, in a way, as by 2014,

thousands of migrants were crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat and many more

were storming already the European continent by foot. Since then, thousands of

would-be migrants have died on their way to Europe, mostly by drowning in the

Mediterranean or the Aegean Sea.

According to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), 2014 and

2015 were the deadliest years of the current refugee crisis with 3,300 and 3,800

deaths recorded in the Mediterranean, respectively (IOM 2016a). A shocking scene

occurred in September 2015 when the body of Alan Kurdi, an ethnic Kurdish Syrian

child, washed on the shores of Turkey after a failed attempt by his family to cross the

Aegean Sea into Greece (Withnall 2015). Figures 1 and 2 show the main migration

routes of Syrian (and other refugees) heading into Europe and fatalities among them.

2

Figure 1: Main European migration routes

Some segments of the European population have feared that among the

incoming refugees may be elements planted by terror groups such as the Islamic State

of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), intent on committing terror incidents in Europe (Melvin

2016). Such a conviction was underpinned by the terrorist attacks in Paris in

November 2015 and in Brussels in March 2016 when a few from among the arriving

refugees possibly ended up as killers and accessories to terrorism and Islamist

extremism, causing large-scale suspicion of the refugees as a whole in the eyes of

many European citizens. John Davis (2016) argues that refugees, precisely due to

their status of being so, could have been used as a cover for some “battle hardened”

Islamist extremists planning to launch terrorist attacks in European metropolises.

Background to the problem

When the EU formally came into being in 1993, its objectives were to abolish inter-

state rivalries and encourage economic and political benefits through free trade and

contacts among democratic partners. By the mid-2000s, the EU had 28 members and

was ensuing a policy of enlargement to the east and south with hopes of eventually

converting the whole continent into a peaceful, prosperous region (Morgan 2006).

3

Figure 2: Migrant fatalities in the Mediterranean Sea

While securitizing its external perimeter through an attempted process of

democratization and backing the democratic aspirations in the Middle East and North

Africa (MENA), however, the EU appears to have failed to notice non-systemic

threats such as terrorism, extremism, and illegal migration, which have been taken on

a new agenda after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., the consequent

U.S.-led ‘global war on terror’ (GWoT) and other incidents of terror in Europe,

including the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings and 7 July 2005 London

bombings (von Drehle 2015). Since then, the EU’s inadequately defended inner and

insufficiently protected outer borders turned out to be easy targets for terroristic

attacks and illegal inroads of migrants and refugees from poor and unstable MENA

countries (Dannreuther 2004). Stefan Lehne (2016c) stresses the fact that for the EU

region to be free of any internal control works to the full extent only when

underpinned by the effective system of external border control, “common visa

policies, and agreed rules on asylum and immigration,” which the EU has yet to fully

elaborate upon. Tony Cartalucci (2016), in turn, takes a harsh stance by saying that

4

“humanitarian” wars in the MENA region being waged by the EU and North Atlantic

Treaty Organization (NATO) have struck back in the form of the current refugee

crisis and revengeful terroristic attacks, thereby laying bare a porous structure of the

EU’s external borders.

The 2011 NATO’s aerial attacks of Libya was approved by the UN Security

Council and labeled by many as an example of “responsibility to protect” (R2P), but

also criticized for its “moral hazard” given its emboldening of armed rebels who

overthrow the government of Gaddafi (Kuperman 2013, p. 2). The Syrian civil war, in

turn, born in the womb of the largely failed social uprisings known as the ‘Arab

Spring’ and seizure of large parts of the Iraqi and Syrian territory by ISIS terrorists

eventuated in a massive flow of refugees, most moving to neighboring countries of

Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon. A smaller, but still significant, portion of the generated

refugees fled to Europe (mostly via Turkey and the Aegean Sea) in a bid to avoid the

terrors of war and seek a safe haven far from their conflict-torn and economically

destitute states (Alexandrova 2015).

According to the IOM, over one million refugees of a variety of MENA states

and Afghanistan crossed the borders of the EU during 2015 alone, with the largest

groups being from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The refugee flow into Europe in 2015

was nearly four times of 2014 where 280,000 had done so. In the first five months of

2016, in turn, over 200,000 migrants and refugees from the MENA region have come

to Europe, many via the Mediterranean (IOM, 2016b). This crisis has already been

denoted as the highest migration influx into Europe since the aftermath of the WWII

(Norton 2015). Figure 3 shows the number of asylum seekers in the EU during the

first 10 months of 2015, with the largest groups being from Syria, Afghanistan,

Kosovo and Iraq – in that order. Figure 4, in turn, demonstrates the countries hosting

5

Figure 3: Asylum seekers in the EU by national origin

the largest numbers of refugees in the world.

Internal EU problems such as economic hardships due to Russia’s contra-

sanctions in return to the EU’s economic sanctions against ostensible Russian military

interventions in Ukraine and annexation of Crimea, Greece’s bankruptcy and Great

Britain’s withdrawal from the Union (Brexit) have not made the situation any easier.

The refugee influx has exposed deep contradictions and misunderstandings in

seemingly sound choir of EU voices regarding migration policy and overall issues of

dealing with refugees (Michta 2015). As the Foreign Minister of Germany, Frank-

Walter Steinmeier, responded to this author’s question when asked about the refugee

issue facing the EU: “There is no consensus [among EU members] about a common

European migration policy.”1

Against this background, significant parts of the EU society have started to blame

their national authorities for not doing enough to mitigate the refugee crisis, thereby

unwittingly providing unconscious support for Euroskeptics (those critical or opposed

to the EU project) and the radical right-wing parties. During 2015, ultra-

1 Question posed by the author to the German Foreign Minister Steinmeier, OSCE Academy in

Bishkek, 1 April 2016.

6

Figure 4: Top countries by number of the world’s refugees hosted

nationalist opposition parties in Germany and France, Alternative for Germany (AfD)

and Front National (FN), riding on the wave of popularist criticism of their respective

governments for not finding reasonable solutions to the refugee crisis, scoring

victories in local elections. The AfD was successful in three German federal lands of

Saxony, Thuringian and Brandenburg, gaining 15%, 13% and 24% of votes

respectively, and exposing a defeat of the Chancellor Angela Merkel’s party in “key

state elections” (Paterson 2016). France’s FN, in turn, easily won the first round of

France’s regional elections, and despite giving way to the temporary alliance of

socialists and center-rights in the second round, showed itself as a powerful force

ready to replace the ruling Socialist Party headed by the President Francois Hollande

(Henley 2015).

The refugee crisis is also said to be blamed for Britain’s vote to leave the EU.

According to Angelo Boccato (2016), the crisis was politicized by the “Leave” camp

in order to gain more votes, whereas Don Flynn, Director of the Migrants Rights

7

Network, argues that it was not the refugee influx, but rather the freedom of

movement that was a decisive factor in the Brexit vote (quoted in Boccato 2016).

However, Britain’s United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) amidst the refugee

crisis had called for the UK to leave the EU and the Schengen zone, restore full and

permanent national border controls and send all asylum seekers back to their countries

of origin (Gutteridge 2015).

The quota system on intra-EU redistribution of refugees introduced by the

European Commission as an emergency measure has revealed a clash of opinions

between the Western and Central-Eastern EU member states, thus strengthening an

existing East-West division (Gasanov 2016). Migration policy, Schengen and other

EU operational mechanisms badly need therapy, but can the EU have enough

resources and political will to do so? (Maiani 2016)

Research question

This Thesis attempts to determine the extent to which the new refugee crisis facing

the EU, emanating from the Syrian, Iraqi and Afghan civil wars and other unstable

regions in MENA and sub-Saharan Africa, affects the institutional fabric of the EU

and what would-be risks and challenges does such a refugee crisis entail. This study

also investigates the implications of the refugee crisis to the functioning of the

Schengen zone, strengthening of the Euroskeptic and radical right-wing parties, the

Brexit campaign, the EU’s East-West division as well as weakening of intra-EU

commitments of unity and solidarity. The overall key research question of this study

is thus: How has the ongoing refugee crisis affected the viability and integrity of the

European Union?

8

Theoretical framework

This Thesis takes up the prisms of several theories of European integration: “Neo-

functionalism,” “Inter-governmentalism,” “Realist model of immigration policy,” and

the “Theory of the Other.” Neo-functionalism builds on the idea that integration in

one sphere gives rise to integration in another (spillover effect), while inter-

governmentalism prioritizes the role of the nation states in the integration process.

These theories will assist in explicating the behavior of the EU member states vis-à-

vis the Syrian refugee crisis (Ginoyatov 2015).

The realist model of immigration policy, in turn, relies on the state’s core role

in shaping and implementing required immigration strategy with objectives that may

reach far beyond ordinary economic or rational motivations, thus oftener being the

products of the current geopolitical and foreign policy situations, or of confrontation

of various power branches. This model will come handy while explaining the

approach of EU member states towards migrants and refugees.

The Theory of the Other, in turn, is a very holistic and multi-dimensional

approach postulating that one, often an “alien” (foreigner), is perceived as not

belonging and being different in some fundamental way (Melani 2009). This theory

will serve for substantiation of the nationalist and aggressive rhetoric of the EU

radical right-wing forces.

Hypotheses

This thesis will test the following two hypotheses:

H1: Lack of a joint political response among the EU member states to

the refugee crisis has highlighted the fractionary nature of EU’s

integration as demonstrated by (i) tensions both within and

between nation states and European institutions, and (ii) a crisis of

shared values and solidarity within the Union.

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H2: The ramifications of the Syrian refugee crisis for the EU have

included (i) heightening centrifugal tendencies (e.g. return to pre-

Schengen border controls), (ii) solidification of Euroskeptic and

radical right-wing parties, (iii) Brexit, and (iv) strengthening of the

internal East-West polarization.

Methodology and research design

This Thesis will entail qualitative research. I intend to use primary and secondary data

as well as a review of literature. The primary sources will constitute in-depth elite and

expert interviews (N=9) with political analysts, security and migration experts and, if

lucky, European government officials, to gain insights into their visions of the

situation with the refugee crisis. The secondary sources will include: (a) official

documents on the refugee crisis; (b) academic literature; (c) Heads of states and

government officials’ speeches, and (d) relevant news items.

Research significance

In this Thesis, I seek to conduct the following significant tasks: (a) explore the

potential risks and challenges of the large and uncontrolled flow of refugees/migrants

into the EU member states, (b) assess the EU’s institutional capacity and behavior in

times of emergencies on the example of the current ‘Syrian refugee crisis’, and (c)

focus on the anti-immigrant tendencies within the European societies as breeding

grounds for the rise of radical right-wing parties and their associated agendas. As

such, this work is expected to be beneficial to experts and policy makers specializing

on the EU politics, including among governments, international organizations (IOs)

and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) dealing with refugee issues.

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II

LITERATURE REVIEW

The European Commission has recognized the ongoing refugee crisis being

experienced by the EU member states to be the largest since the aftermath of the

WWII. According to Ruslan Gasanov (2016), lack of joint mechanisms to control the

situation with migrants and refugees has exposed “inefficiency of the European

institutions and organizational structures” (p. 1). However, Andrey Savelviev (2016)

asserts that control per se does not constitute a remedy, since it is not directed to

decrease migration, rather substitute illegal migrants with legal ones, thereby leaving

the system vulnerable. However, it appears that control is the one and only means of

migration policy at the EU disposal to halt the migration tsunami. Savelviev compares

this strategy with the practice of restriction of the EU migration acquis in the 1990s

when such a step contributed to the increase of illegal entries, rather than having

diminished migration intensity.

As one of the distinctive features of the crisis, Gasanov (2016) defines a

conflation of several migration flows – those of both legal and illegal economic

migration and refugees – into one huge stream, a significant part of which is aimed at

Europe. Naina Bajekal (2015) interprets the inability of the EU member states to

adequately separate migrants from refugees as a manifest of “political friction in

Europe” that negatively affects the European legal framework (p. 50). Another

friction resides in “Europe’s dysfunctional asylum policy” that welcomes asylum and

at the same time pushes nation states to restrict movement through their territories or

fully seal the borders on the route of migrants (Healy 2016, p. 13).

11

Such a behavior of an increasing number of the EU member states does not

picture the Union as a community committed to shared values and solidarity, rather as

a collection of separate nation states pragmatically calculating all costs and benefits of

their membership. Inconsistency of diverging interests, reluctance to elaborate joint

stances and political sensitivity of many nation states have resulted in deficient, weak

and miscalculated European foreign policy that has failed to address crises in the

EU’s immediate neighborhood such as the Arab Spring upheavals and the Libyan and

the Syrian civil wars, which have induced the refugee crisis now troubling Europe

(Morillas et al. 2015).

A brief picture of the ‘Syrian refugee crisis’

The ongoing refugee crisis facing Europe embodies a conglomerate of interrelated

factors such as the global financial crisis, augmentation of social inequality in the

developing countries, and destabilization of a series of MENA states and Afghanistan

as a consequence of civil wars, terrorism and the Arab Spring. Although Libyans do

not constitute any significant part of the refugee flow, a principle push driver of the

new refugee flow to Europe via Mediterranean has been Libya’s political and

economic disintegration after the fall of its long-time president, Gaddafi, in addition

to Syria’s brutal civil war. For the EU, the acuteness of the migrant situation

intensified in light of the beginning of the Arab Spring that provoked France and the

UK as European NATO members with the U.S. leading from behind to interfere first

in Libya under the auspices of humanitarian intervention and then to assist in the anti-

governmental activities of the Syrian “moderate opposition” in an unsuccessful bid to

overthrow Bashar Al-Assad, the sitting president of that country (Gasanov 2016).

Apart from external factors contributing to the stirring of the refugee crisis,

there were also internal reasons in the originating MENA states, such as wide-spread

12

corruption, poverty, violence and political persecution, factors which pushed people

to seek safety and security either in neighboring countries such as Jordan and

Lebanon, or make their way across the Mediterranean, Turkey and the Aegean Sea

towards the EU. Another key factor represented the ISIS terroristic activities, mainly

in Syria and Iraq, and the alleged ruthless actions the region’s dictators, such as

Bashar Al-Assad, who have persecuted and eliminated their own people prior and

during the civil wars, thus enticing people to flee their homeland and seek safety

abroad (America 2015).

EU’s policy towards the MENA region

A Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (EMP), aka “Barcelona process,” an idea of

establishment of a multi-lateral rapprochement mechanism between the EU and

MENA countries, was doomed since its establishment in 1995 because of “the

implementation gap between rhetoric and policy” pursued by the EU. Instead of

promoting an agenda of the MENA as a strategic partner, claims Roland Dannreuther

(2004), the EU envisaged the EMP as its own laboratory for running democracy,

economic development, liberalization and human rights experiments with the

objective of its own (not MENA’s) security. The MENA states, in turn, were highly

reluctant to carry out deep structural reforms and “go beyond a declaratory acceptance

of EU conditionalities.” Thus, instead of building integration, the EMP ended up as a

politicized and securitized project (p. 140).

Re-launching of the EMP as the Union for the Mediterranean (UfM) in 2008 did

not save the situation, either. It only “added another layer of institutional complexity

to EU initiatives in the region.” Moreover, the UfM demonstrated its inability to

adequately react to the challenges of the Arab Spring, thereby making the EU

governments tackle that issue on bilateral basis (Youngs 2015). It has thus been

13

argued that the initial process of the MENA democratization nurtured by the West did

not yield the results expected. It rather brought chaos and instability which backfired

in the form of migrant and refugee flows to Europe (Alexandrova 2015).

Prior management of refugee crises

This is not the first time when Europe has been confronted with the massive amounts

of people on its doorstep. In the 1990s, the disintegration of former Yugoslavia and,

particularly, the ensuing war in Kosovo, pushed almost one million refugees across

the borders into Macedonia and Montenegro, but also other parts of Europe. All the

more earlier in 1956, the Hungarian crisis forced 180,000 people to flee to

neighboring Austria. That Balkan refugee crisis was largely handled with the

assistance of the United Nations that had 100,000 people evacuated among the

European countries “under a temporary humanitarian relocation scheme” (Healy

2016). Despite the involvement of external actors, the Balkan refugee crisis

constituted as an internal issue for Europe when the migration was run according to

the principle of “some Europeans going to other Europeans,” that is, a movement of

people took place within the boundaries of the European geographical and cultural

zone (Safonova 2007).

According to Joanne van Selm (2006), aside from a semblance of cooperation,

Europe in the 1990s demonstrated hardly any coordination in terms of granting

protection to refugees and asylum seekers due to different approaches of individual

states. Given the necessity of designing a new migration and asylum policy, the EU

member states introduced restrictive measures which became known as “Fortress

Europe.” The heaviest burden of the Balkan refugees in the 1990s was taken by

Germany due to that country’s liberal legislation, whereas other countries refused to

share in it. But after a series of attacks on refugees by radical right-wing and

14

xenophobic elements and ensuing political shift to the right, Germany had to toughen

its migration and asylum legislation. Other countries immediately followed suit. The

Balkan or Yugoslavian refugee crisis represented a big challenge for the EU due to

obsolete mechanisms of the refugee policy left over from the Cold War’s bipolar

ideological confrontation with the focus upon political emigrants, rather than other

forms of refugees (Safonova 2007).

The Hungarian crisis in the 1950s had broken out upon the Hungarian state’s

desire to withdraw Soviet troops from its territory. An armed revolution in the mid-

1950s against the pro-Soviet regime and invading Soviet troops (1956) eventuated in

the exodus of refugees. Given the policy of neutrality pursued by the Austrian

government, Austria appealed to the West for “financial and logistical support” in the

granting of asylum to refugees. Within several months, the UN relocated almost all

refugees across different countries thereby lifting the pressure from Austria and also

Europe as a whole (Granville 2006, p. 71).

In an attempt to find a solution to the current refugee crisis, the EU could have

embarked upon the experience of the conflict in Yugoslavia. According to Theodora

Dragostinova, however, the current Syrian refugee crisis demonstrates the

unpreparedness of the EU’s institutions to deal with it and a dominance of national

approaches in dealing with refugees, instead (quoted in Origins 2015). According to

the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, this refugee crisis has

exposed the crisis of solidarity among the member EU states which project no desire

to act in unity and co-ordination, preferring to stick with their national stances on the

situation. Grandi recommends meeting and accommodating visions of all EU member

states concerned “in a spirit of solidarity and responsibility sharing” is the best

solution to the refugee crisis (UNHCR 2016).

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EU’s migration legislation

In the spheres of migration and asylum, the EU lacks an efficient common legislation

because issues of migration and refugee management are still addressed according to

the norms of national states’ legislation. The 1977 European Convention, for instance,

is only politically, not legally, binding, thus allowing the EU member states to merely

listen to, but not accomplish its recommendations. The Hague Programme 2004 and

the Stockholm Programme 2010 – five-year blueprints for further EU institutional and

integral development – tasked to design a common EU migration and asylum policy

also failed to translate insights into reality. This is evidenced by the maintenance of

migration regulation either on a national or bilateral, rather than a European

multilateral, basis (Tsareva 2014).

Doris Peschke (2005) traces the attempts of the EU migration policy

development with the fall of the iron curtain and end of the Cold War in late-1980s

and early-1990s having generated a fear of the uncontrolled waves of migrants from

the outer corners of Eastern Europe. The signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992

constituted the initiative to introduce control over external migration. The last decade

of the 20th century is considered as a period of migratory fragmentation of Europe and

its neighborhood into “Schengenland” (i.e. states which are part of the Schengen

zone), “buffer-zone” (i.e. “would-be EU members”), “transitive states” (i.e. states

used by migrants as transit towards other, mostly, Western European states) and

“states of origins” (Sudoplatov 2006). The 1999 Treaty of Amsterdam formally

conferred the European Commission with powers in the migration and asylum

domains that elaborated a “common European asylum policy based on the Geneva

Refugee Convention.” As a result, the EU member states agreed on taking measures

to the formation of a common procedure for granting refugee status as well as

16

“common measures against irregular migration” (Peschke 2005, p. 287).

In 2014, given the unfolding of the ongoing refugee crisis and the expiration

of the Stockholm Programme, the EU faced the challenge to develop a new roadmap

for its member states’ co-operation on migration and asylum related issues. The main

focus of the Stockholm Programme was put on the reinforcement of the importance of

the close co-operation between the migration policy and external border control, and

commitment to the three principles of (i) co-operation with the origin countries and

strengthening of border control, (ii) “convergence of the national and the European

migration and asylum policy practices,” and (iii) “distribution of the asylum

applications among the EU member states” (Potemkina 2015, p. 16).

Instead of finding concrete solutions to the refugee crisis in the short and long

perspectives, however, EU’s June 2014 summit approved a new package of

documents called the “Ypres guidelines,” which replaced the Stockholm Programme

with the aim of channeling of a body of aforementioned policy plans and strategies in

a unified manner with results to be evaluated in 2017. As a consequence, the Summit

outcome document did not contain any fresh ideas and simply suggested to follow

previously approved directives (p. 17).

Fueling rightist parties

Since 2014, the anti-immigrant radical right-wing and affiliated Euroskeptic parties

have gained a significant portion of public support across Europe. Capitalizing on

public frustration and xenophobia towards undesired migrants and refugees, the

radical right-wingers and Euroskeptics have been rocking the boat of the mainstream

of the European politics and Brussels’s bureaucracy. Their rise has renewed their

political status with a perspective of indefinitely remaining in the EU political

framework (Russkaia Idea 2014). The exploitation of the electorate’s fears of

17

potential outcomes of foreigners’ influx – by way of rising unemployment, alleged

increase in criminal activity, and cultural segregation – have allowed such extremist

parties to appeal to the sense of social cohesion, traditional Christian and European

social values and national identity against an ostensible Islamic invasion (The

Economist 2015).

In Germany, where far-right parties have been almost completely isolated

from the political battles for decades, anti-immigration rhetoric has resulted in the

2015 and 2016 regional elections success of the right-wing AfD once considered to be

“a right-wing fringe group” with anti-Euro agenda, but currently pushing for the anti-

migrant and anti-refugee objectives. The AfD is said to have given the rise to the

xenophobic “Patriotic Europeans against Islamisation of the West” movement that has

been conservatively estimated to attract 20,000 people to the anti-immigrant rallies in

the eastern parts of Germany (Gutteridge 2015; Sims 2016). The outcome of the 2015

and 2016 elections has exposed a pattern of a divided Germany between those

supporting Merkel’s pro-refugee politics and those strongly challenging it and

providing AfD with a chance to become “a permanent part of a political landscape”

(Dempsey 2016k).

Italy, in turn, which stands on the frontline line of the refugee crisis given its

geographic proximity to the Mediterranean and North Africa, has also seen a rise in

anti-immigration movement. The formerly separatist Lega Nord has gained entry into

the three out of 20 Italian provinces winning between one-fifth to half of the votes in

the 2015 provisional elections. Its leader, Matteo Salvini, advocates for opposition to

both migration and European integration. In neighboring Austria, the far-right

Freedom Party (FPÖ) has entered the coalitional government together with the Social

Democrats and nominated its candidate for the re-run of the presidential elections in

18

December 2016 due to a number of detected violations while counting the postal

ballots earlier in the year. Previously, the FPÖ candidate, Norbert Höffer, had given

way to his Green counterpart, Alexander van der Bellen, by less than 1% of votes.

Some feel that this time around, Höffer’s chances to win the Austrian presidency are

high. Aside from his anti-immigrant stance, Höffer has promised to organize a similar

referendum as Britain did on the withdrawal from the EU (Gutteridge 2015; The

Economist 2016).

In Poland, the right-wing Euroskeptic Law and Justice (PiS) has unilaterally

won control over the government in the 2015 parliamentary elections, thereby,

lurching the country to the right. Its leaders openly oppose the EU refugee

reallocation plan and call for Poland to be more sovereign vis-à-vis Brussels and

Berlin. Likewise, France’s FN has threatened to replace the Socialist’s rule despite the

failure in the 2015 local elections. Its charismatic leader, Marine Le Pen, leverages on

the high rates of migration influx and France’s growing Muslim population, and

appeals for France to act unilaterally against the threats posed by migrants, especially

following the 2015 Paris attacks by Islamist terrorists which killed at least 128 people.

Likewise, in Denmark, the Danish People’s Party (DPP) has safeguarded itself

as the second largest political force when campaigning against mass migration and

multiculturalism, while in Scandinavia, the Swedish Democrats and Finnish True

Finns are the third and second largest parties in their respected governments, both of

which take hardline anti-immigration stances. Netherlands’ far-right Party for

Freedom (PVV), in turn, enjoys an increased public support by preying on “people’s

fears over a potentially huge influx of migrants” (Early-Robins 2015; Gutteridge

2015).

19

Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orbán, has been decried by many Western

Europeans for his anti-human rights stance on the migrant issue given his tough,

almost racist, rhetoric and an erection of a razor wire fence on the country’s border

with Serbia to block incoming migrants on their westward journey. Initially, the

Hungarian strict border control was making Hungary an outcast in the EU, but with

the increase of migrant torrents all the more EU member states came to share a

restrictive border regime. However, temporary restrictions are thought not to “address

the long-term security tasks” facing the EU (Melchoir 2015, p. 22). Anti-immigrant

stance of Orbán’s Fidesz – Hungarian Civil Alliance Party is both complemented and

challenged by even more radical Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary) Party that

insists on deploying the Hungarian army to the border as a deterrence mechanism on

the migrant route (Gutteridge 2015).

Farewell to Schengen?

The Schengen agreement, which came into force in 1995, was originally signed in

1985 by five European states (Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the

West Germany) for the purpose of free circulation of “goods, capitals, services and

persons,” eliminating border control within Schengen as well as promoting coherence

of border policy in relations with external states (Outrive 2001, p. 44). In 1990, the

Agreement was complimented by the Schengen Convention on common visa policy,

which was eventually incorporated into the EU legislation under the 1999 Amsterdam

Treaty with some contradictory points concerning, for example, temporary protection

of refugees that was not envisaged by Schengen (Sudoplatov 2006; Outrive 2001).

Andrew Convey and Marek Kupiszewski (1995) point at a degree of overlap

“between the rules of movement” under both documents (p. 942), while Lode Van

Outrive (2001) specifies that Schengen’s functions were largely duplicated by the

20

parallel institutions of Europol and Interpol, thus lacking clarity. He also notes the

lack of judicial and parliamentary control over the Schengen zone by linking it to the

absence of an interaction process between Schengen and European institutions.

The current refugee crisis is bringing the achievement of free movement for

the EU citizens, residents and legal visitors inside the Schengen zone into question.

This is not new, however. When the first Arab Spring protests leading to regime

change in Tunisia and Egypt began in 2011, Italy and France closed their borders to

halt the flow of migrants from the Mediterranean further into the EU and the

Schengen area. Besides, Schengen provides for the reinforcement of the temporary

border controls when public order or national security of states concerned are

threatened. Today, more and more Schengen members use this right to re-impose

controls, thus making this trend permanent. The objective to stem migrants and

refugees thus testifies to the degree of erosion of Schengen (Sánches-Montejano

2015). The main question remains whether the Schengen zone is doomed to exist, or

its member states will find a way to sustain it?

Unity in disunity

The unfolding refugee crisis in Europe with the rise of Euroskepticism and right

radicalism as well as potential abolishment of the Schengen zone testifies to the lack

of united co-operation among member states on the European scale. This crisis has

divided the EU into two, alongside the geographical East-West fault-lines in keeping

with the best (or worst) traditions of the “clash of civilizations” when the Western

part of Europe projects sympathy and warmth towards migrants and refugees, while

the Eastern counterpart is hostile and picturing refugees as an intrinsic threat to

national and ethnic identities. After a European debt crisis separated the continent to

the Northern creditors states and the Southern debtors states in 2009, the deepening

21

East-West divide has all the chances “to become the next line of fracture” in the EU

(Morillas 2015, p. 21).

On the national and supranational levels, the East-West cleavage is expressed

in two alliances, one between Germany and the European Commission, and the other

comprising of members of the Visegrad Group: the Czech Republic, Poland,

Slovakia, and Hungary at the head. The Western camp and, primarily, Germany

actively promote an open border policy to receive asylum and push for reforms of the

EU mechanisms, but without sufficiently consulting with its Eastern EU partners. The

Visegrad Group, in turn, objects to the unilateral decision-making taken by the West

and lambastes the German Chancellor for bypassing the European rules and

regulations, for instance, the suspension of the Dublin Convention that prescribes

registration of migrants in the first country of their entry (Morillas 2015).

Another East-West confrontation point resides in the quota system on migrant

and refugee reallocation being considered by the EU Commission. The majority of the

EU member states, however, have well-founded fears that such a mechanism might

end up permanently established (Gasanov 2016). Pol Morillas (2015) designates an

imposition of migrant and refugee quota as “a milestone in intra-European division in

the crisis.” (p.22) The third clash occurs between supranational and the national, that

is, European policy lines and national visions on tackling the refugee crisis.

The refugee crisis with all its consequences has demonstrated that

commitments to solidarity and common values among the EU members easily retreat

when national interests and security are at stake. But giving priority to national

interests in such an asymmetrical institutional construction as the EU means to

weaken its resilience towards external and internal crises which “might demand

national sacrifices for the stability of the union” (Dullien 2015).

22

Conclusion

The literature review conducted in this chapter demonstrates that despite the scale and

complexity of the Syrian refugee crisis, on the one hand, the EU appears to be

equipped with experience, and institutional and legal framework and many other

means necessary to deal with the emergency it is facing; but on the other hand, the

MSs project weak to no political will and willingness to act in a coordinated manner,

preferring, instead, to take solitary actions without reference to existing European

supranational superstructures and build-in mechanisms.

Immigration acquis has been dusted, regulatory mechanisms are coated in rust

with hardly any support being provided by the MSs, or as in case of Schengen, largely

suspended once a national security threat appears to loom on a horizon. The Union’s

institutional impotence is worsened by reckless and short-sighted policy conducted by

its MSs towards the MENA countries in the past with destructive effects in the

present and potentially unpleasant results in the future exemplified by the Syrian

refugee crisis. The picture of a chaotic European assemblage would be incomplete

without right-wing and Euroskeptic parties which are selling the anti-migrant, anti-

Islamic and even anti-European trend to the EU public by capitalizing upon massive

influx of refugees, thus shattering principles of European integration.

The next chapter will dwell on the analysis and testing of two hypotheses

proposed in this Thesis in an attempt to potentially find an overall correlation between

the Syrian refugee crisis and the internal disharmony and imbalance within the EU as

an integration project.

23

III

ANALYSIS AND HYPOTHESES TESTING

The ongoing migration and refugee crisis in Europe signals the deep structural and

institutional crisis in the EU. Before large scale elections in 2017—the parliamentary

in Germany and the presidential in France—constituencies in both countries put an

uncontrolled and unmanaged inflow of migrants and refugees primarily from Syria,

Iraq, and Afghanistan (together the “Syrian refugee crisis”) on the first place in the

list of their demands and complaints to the incumbent German and French authorities.

General inefficiency of state responses as well as a partial success of common

European measures (e.g. quota system and a refugee deal with Turkey that implies

sending illegal migrants to the Turkish territory and receiving legal ones, in return) to

tackle the refugee crisis have led to the local results in certain areas affected by the

crisis (e.g. closing the Balkan route for migrants), but have not resolved the situation

for good.

The EU as an entity and not a mere collection of nation states is tasked to

provide responses and reactions to every issue and problem that might endanger its

existence in a collective manner by taking into account interests and concerns of all

member states (MSs) without exceptions. Throughout 2015, the EU strived to grip the

refugee crisis by implementing the aforementioned model, but largely failed due to

lack of real co-operation between member states as well as absence of common and

harmonized migration and refugee policy to complement their collective actions

(Lehne 2016b).

24

Why does the EU as the most successful integration project in the world,

looked upon as a role model for other regional integrational associations, finds itself

unable to cope with the Syrian refugee crisis? The reasons may include: institutional

complexity, inefficiency of legislative arrangements, confrontation of MSs’ perceived

vital interests and opinions, and rising tendency of autonomy and unilateralism among

them. Taking the so-called Syrian refugee crisis as its focus, this Thesis has attempted

to establish a link between the influx of migrants and refugees and centrifugal

tendencies within the EU with a particular emphasis on the Schengen agreement,

strengthening of the Euroskeptic and radical right-wing parties as well as weakening

of intra-EU commitments of unity and solidarity. Based on the main research question

of this Thesis that was How has the ongoing refugee crisis affected the viability and

integrity of the EU?, two hypotheses were formulated. Each are addressed and tested

in this chapter.

Hypothesis 1: Analysis

H1: Lack of a joint political response among the EU member states to

the refugee crisis has highlighted the fractionary nature of the

EU’s integration as demonstrated by (i) tensions both within and

between nation states and European institutions, and (ii) a crisis of

shared values and solidarity within the Union.

The Syrian refugee crisis has changed the EU’s narrative of a secure Europe

without borders enshrined in shared values, commitments and democracy among all

member states. According to the head of the European Council, Donald Tusk, the EU

more than ever needs to restore trustful relations between its institutions and its

citizens and rebuild “the reputation of the Union as a synonym of protection and

stability.” The Bratislava road map (which is still being complemented) elaborated

after the meeting of the EU leaders in September 2016 encapsulated hot-button issues

confronting the EU, namely: (i) uncontrolled and unmanaged migration, (ii) the EU

25

external border control and management, and (iii) lack of a long-term common

migration and refugee policy (Dempsey 2016a). These are the issues which

undermine trust and solidarity among the EU member states, thereby making them

incapable of coming to joint terms with regards to how to deal with the unfolding

refugee crisis.

Evidence in support of H1 is grounded in the interviews and content-analysis

conducted as well as literature and documents read for this study. According to

Wolfgang Eminger, a German diplomat in Kyrgyzstan, for example, lack of the EU’s

unified political response emanates from an absence of a common vision within the

Union as well as general unpreparedness and “contingency planning” of its

institutions and structures to deal with the migrant and refugee influx as early as

2014.2 Almost all others interviewed agreed on the point that the refugee crisis caught

the EU off guard both at the supranational and state levels. The weak spot that

inflicted so much trouble upon the EU and MSs were the sheer numbers and the

absolute scale of the refugee flow. One interlocutor told that despite the indications

that conflicts and wars in the Middle East as well as poor socio-economic conditions

in some African countries would push people to seek either safety or better life and

economic opportunities outside their zones of residence, the EU officials in Brussels

took an attitude of wait-and-see or observer, hoping for no more than small numbers

of refugees and that, too, on a temporary basis.3

When hundreds of thousands of people arrived, it became clear that the system

once set up to deal with individual cases of migration and asylum ended up becoming

dysfunctional to process thousands of asylum requests at a time, especially at the level

2 Interview with Wolfgang Eminger, Second Secretary at the Embassy of the Federative Republic of

Germany in the Kyrgyz Republic, Bishkek, July 2016. 3 Interview with Juergen Heissel, Member of the Austrian Permanent Mission to the OSCE, Vienna,

October 2016.

26

of individual member states.4 Even Jean-Claude Juncker’s proposals developed in

September 2015 to establish a European border service, make up a list of safe

countries and, the most noteworthy, introduce migrant and refugee reallocation

scheme, did not solve the problem of numbers, as it constituted a too little too late

response to a crisis having already erupted (Knaus 2016).

In his letter before the 2016 Bratislava Summit, Donald Tusk, the President of

the European Council, practically admitted that the EU did not have a substantial plan

for the arrival of a huge amount of migrants and refugees from the MENA countries,

what had already created chaos on the European borders and “a feeling of threat

among many Europeans” (Tusk 2016). According to Alexander Wolters, a German

national and Professor of Sociology at the American University of Central Asia, the

EU was not prepared “in terms of debate and co-ordination, internal dialogue and

policy collective decision-making.” However, in terms of economy, Wolters

expressed confidence that even Germany on its own, let alone 28 states taken

together, could easily digest several millions of migrants if only they agreed on

conducting a civilized dialogue with each other.5

One respondent who desired to remain anonymous, however, objected to the

common assumption of the EU being totally unprepared for a massive inflow of

migrants and refugees. She elaborated her opinion based on the official data and

statistics on the refugee crisis and pointed to some preliminary steps and measures

having been taken up to the bigger developments on the crisis such as the July 2014

strategic guidelines on the new migration policy, the May 2015 European Agenda on

migration and, finally, the September 2015 European Commission plan on migrant

4 Interview with Rashid Gabdulhakov, Independent Researcher, Bishkek, August 2016. 5 Interview with Alexander Wolters, Professor of Sociology, American University in Central Asia,

Bishkek, April 2016.

27

and refugee redistribution across the EU member states. As for her, all that could

amount to some extent preparation on the supranational level.6

In the meantime, inconsistency of the views with regards to how the refugee

crisis should be dealt with and its divergent effect on the EU MSs have led to tensions

within the Union itself. When it comes to granting a protection and asylum for those

who need it, all European states are subscribed to certain commitments and rules.

However, the Syrian refugee crisis has exposed a tendency of shifting responsibility

among the member states for those migrants and refugees who are unwelcomed, or

who simply cannot be taken care of. That was the case with Greece that was obliged

to register all potential newcomers on its territory as a country of first destination

under the Dublin Convention, but lacked the necessary resources and tools to

effectively do so, hoping for a material and technical assistance from its fellow EU

partners who basically preferred to remain aloof and let Greece deal with migrants

and refugees on its own—at least till the resettlement schemes were put in place.7

According to another respondent, a large-scale crisis as the Syrian refugee

flow always ushers in possibilities to pass one’s problems on to others’ shoulders as

means of not being detected or judged for one’s shortcomings. To rectify this

problem, the EU MSs need more co-operation not only on the governmental level, but

also between border and law enforcement agencies to manage the migration routes

and flows in a coordinated manner.8 Stefan Lehne (2016b), a Scholar at the Carnegie

Europe think tank, underlines the importance to overcome “differences of interests

and viewpoints” as well as “diversity of societal attitudes” within the EU as a point of

departure to elaborate a coherent and pragmatic response to the refugee challenge.

6 Interview with the Austrian Institute for European and Security Policy (AIES) anonymous employee,

Vienna, October 2016. 7 Interview with Emiliano Alessandri, the OSCE employee, Vienna, September 2016.

28

On the societal level there is a discrepancy between the official policy line on

migration conducted by incumbent EU governments and ordinary citizens feeling

skeptical about the ability of their political leaders to deliver on the promise to take

the refugee crisis under control. Taken together, this has created the impression of a

fragmented political reality where views of national authorities and their

constituencies on the best ways of tackling the refugee crisis do not coincide. In

Germany, for example, tensions exist across several areas at once, that is within the

government, between the government and people, and within society, itself. The

biggest cleavage has been created by the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, with

her audacious policy stance that Germany could cope with the massive numbers of

migrants and refugees it is receiving. Retaliatory backlash came soon enough on the

part of an anti-migrant movement PEGIDA, originated in Dresden, demanding

migration policy tightening and even full closure of the German borders, and far-right

and Euroskeptic party AfD (Dempsey 2015b).

Upon arrival of more and more migrants and refugees, the German society

also has found itself divided into two camps along the geographical and perceptional

lines. Western Germany with its long-lived tradition of welcoming culture

(“Willkommenskultur”) came into a harsh collision with a stricter and more “skeptical

attitude in the regions of former East Germany” which bear a stark resemblance to the

societies in Central Europe, many strongly opposed to receiving migrants and

refugees in any way possible (Lehne 2016b).

Such a position on the refugee crisis taken by Germany became an object of

an ultimate criticism on the part of its fellow EU companions that blamed the German

government and Chancellor Merkel, in particular, for intensifying the crisis “through

8 Ibid.

29

excessively welcoming gestures.” In the eyes of some European leaders, Germany’s

“open-door policy” created a complicated situation when the whole of the EU felt

obliged to share the migration burden inflicted upon by Merkel. In her eyes, that

picture was presented as a sign of rejection, abandonment and disobedience to the

common rules on the part of Germany’s EU neighbors. For the first time, Germany as

the EU leader, found itself “demanding, rather than offering solidarity” to the rest of

the block members.9

As the refugee crisis grew bigger by the day, and the European political

leaders proved incapable to find sufficient common ground, there were convictions

that the EU had entered in the age of solidarity crisis. Despite loud speeches of how

Germany and the rest of Europe should remain embarked upon the European and

humanitarian values and stay united when offering protection to those in need, the

impression was made that solidarity constituted the key missing component of the EU

approach to the refugee crisis — and, indeed, it was (Dempsey 2016l).

Before this refugee crisis stroke, any tensions in the EU on migration issues

were addressed unilaterally by MSs alone in the pursuit of their own divergent

national interests without any assistance from the EU institutions. For instance, in

2000s, Spain and Italy devised their own tailor-made plans and solutions to lessen the

migration flow from Africa to their territories. The difference was that Spain

negotiated bilateral agreements directly with some of the African countries, whether

they were countries of origin or transit, whereas Italy relied on bilateral agreement

with the Libyan government headed by Gaddafi. The EU member states not sharing

“the same historical backgrounds or perspectives when dealing with immigration”

were thus reluctant to transfer their powers in this field to the supranational

9 Interview with Wolters, op cit.

30

institutions fearing of being subjected to the decisions which might have endangered

their national interests (Vimont 2016). A member of the Austrian Permanent Mission

to the OSCE, Juergen Heissel, confirms such distribution of powers underlining the

prerogative of the EU member states and their domestic politics in dealing with

migration and refugee issues.10

When the migration hit its highest level in 2015, some European countries

continued to draw on their national approaches to migration despite the fact that

individual migration policies did not constitute the solution to the crisis. In reality,

multidirectional tracks of the EU MSs vis-à-vis the refugee crisis with some countries

sticking to the rules of the game and risking “being inundated by refugee requests,”

others closing their national borders, and the third implementing the so-called “the

wave through approach,” that is letting migrants and refugees across their borders

without being properly inspected, together resulted in “a progressive breakdown of

solidarity” within the EU (Vimont 2016).

The question is how the EU whose image, outlook and the way of direction

were built around the sense of collective solidarity has driven itself into a juncture

when this very solidarity is weakening or fading away? According to Eminger,

solidarity is interpreted by each member state in its own sophisticated way:

This is again the matter of national governments and national interests

within the EU where [there] exist different ways of resolving different

issues and problems. In terms of values, they are quite vaguely

defined.11

In his opinion, to breach this solidarity gap, member states should smother some of

the national interests and aspirations and come to a compromise even if it “would not

10 Interview with Heissel, op cit. 11 Interview with Eminger, op cit.

31

be compatible with opinions of some members.”12

An OSCE employee, Emiliano Alessandri, in turn, does not see anything

extraordinary in the EU MSs not agreeing on migration. The issue, according to him,

comes down not only to cost-benefit analysis when states calculate all risks and gains

of taking and not taking migrants and refugees, rather to sharing responsibility, which

is currently nearly completely out of favor by many member states. This is especially

evident in the case of the Central European countries whose economies and migration

records are largely incompatible to those of their Western European partners, thereby

transforming the migration situation into a heavy burden.13

The Central European states, namely the Visegrad Four (Czech Republic,

Hungary, Poland and Slovakia) are tagged to be the ones undermining the EU

solidarity. However, there exist different perceptions on how to assess the position of

Central Europe on migration. One part of experts adheres to the opinion that these

states have logical reasons to oppose the mainstream EU migration narrative given

their Communist past with little experience of mass immigration, being closed and

more traditional societies and given their mostly mono-ethnic composition with a

miniscule percentage of foreigners. Solidarity is thus the last thing that occupies the

minds of the Central European politicians who perceive migration as a threat to

national security and national identity of their respected countries.14 Vladimír

Bartovic, a Director of the European Institute for European Policy, argues that the

refugee crisis stands as the first serious endurance test of “Central European states’

solidarity with the rest of the EU,” but they are not to blame for something that has

never existed as in the past, the EU member states did not bother to help Spain that

12 Ibid. 13 Interview with Alessandri, op cit. 14 Interviews with an AIES anonymous employee, op cit. and with Stefan Lehne, Visiting Scholar at

32

was “under similar migration pressures” (Dempsey 2016d).

Some experts, on the contrary, put a part of the blame on the Western

European countries. Neil Buckley, Eastern Europe Editor of The Financial Times,

explains that Western Europe while planning and imposing refugee quota system did

not take into account the sensitivity of migration issue as well as absence of

experience with migrants in Central Europe. Hence, these states refused to participate

in it. His colleague, Martin Ehl, a reporter at the Czech daily Hospodářskénoviny, in

turn, is convinced that European values and solidarity have never been valued and

taken seriously by the Central European states which viewed the EU “more as a cash

machine than as a source of ideas and inspiration for the institutions of the free market

and liberal democracy.” The Western EU members, in turn, were blind to admit the

intrinsic historical and cultural differences of their neighbors, “while presenting

themselves as the only role models” (Dempsey 2016d).

Another group of experts finds the behavior of the Central European states

troubling arguing that they do not comply with democratic mechanisms of the EU by

showing almost no willingness to voluntary accept refugees or provide any assistance

to those mostly affected by the crisis. Federiga Bindi of the Center for Transatlantic

Relations at Johns Hopkins University, argues that for Central Europe, the refugee

problem is not about shared solidarity, but about giving up a part of their national

sovereignty to the EU, thus rendering as a sensitive issue (Dempsey 2016d).

Frank Cibulka, a migration expert and Professor at Zayed University, and

István Gyarmati, President of the International Center for Democratic Transition,

share a similar stance on how to interpret the solidarity issue in the Central European

countries. According to Cibulka, a compulsory urgency to reallocate migrants and

Carnegie Europe, Vienna, October 2016.

33

refugees along the EU members was accepted by Central Europe as a reflection of a

supranational hegemony:

What is proclaimed by the EU organizational elites and by Angela

Merkel and Francois Hollande as ‘solidarity’ is labelled by the

Visegrad countries as an example of undemocratic and overly

bureaucratic decisions …, as well as an attempt by Germany and

France to dominate EU and to dictate to its smaller members. For

countries which have only 25 years ago emerged from forty years of

Soviet Union’s hegemony, this strikes a very sensitive chord.15

Gyarmati, in turn, indicates that the Central EU MSs have merely taken up a different

position from their Western EU counterparts, what has been mistaken for a lack of

solidarity. The “current so-called EU position on the migration crisis was formed

unilaterally by some countries,” resulting in a mutual misunderstanding, he says

(quoted in Dempsey 2016d).

Károly Banai, an independent analyst, indicates that the lack of solidarity on

the refugee crisis exists, primarily, among the Central European states, and the

Visegrad Four, in particular, “which is not as unified as it first looks” with its position

being subject to constant changing (quoted in Dempsey 2016d). Pál Dunay, Professor

of NATO and European Security Issues at the Marshall Center, argues that this lack

of solidarity attributed to the Central European states exists only superficially and is

deliberately created by the media outlets and certain political figures “to demonstrate

that they are fighting.” According to Dunay, the Central European politicians play the

‘lack of solidarity’ card to please their electorate, save their governmental positions

and formally show Brussels that they have their own independent opinion on this and

other issues. In reality, however, lack of solidarity represents a smokescreen, an

orchestra with loud voices destined to conceal that in the halls of the European

15 Interview with Professor Frank Cibulka, Migration expert at Zayed University, Bishkek, October

2016.

34

Parliament solidarity still works.16

Overall, the feedback on inquires related to H1 allows to conclude that the

hypothesis holds given an overall consensus that the challenge of the refugee crisis

has exposed the EU to internal tensions and core disagreements both on the

supranational and member states’ level as well as has put into the question the validity

of the common European values and sense of collective solidarity.

Hypothesis 2: Analysis

The above analysis of the H1 implied that the refugee crisis has contributed to the

internal disunity within the EU and put under heavy strain the shared understanding of

European values and commitments, thus bringing to the fore different attitudes among

the EU member states on what solidarity means in the context of dealing with a

massive influx of migrants and refugees. That said, the second Hypothesis of this

Thesis attempts to make the case for more detailed risks and challenges for the EU

being brought about by the refugee crisis.

H2: The ramifications of the Syrian refugee crisis for the EU have

included (i) heightening centrifugal tendencies (e.g. return to pre-

Schengen border controls), (ii) solidification of Euroskeptic and

radical right-wing parties, (iii) Brexit, and (iv) strengthening of the

internal West-East polarization.

Heightening centrifugal tendencies

As the numbers of arriving migrants and refugees rose dramatically in 2015, it

became evident that the Schengen system or system of free zone of movement, a

pillar and an achievement of the European integration, was teetering on the brink of a

possible collapse. Instead of channeling collective efforts to adapt Schengen to the

refugee challenge, the EU MSs availed themselves to a proven practice of reinstating

16 Interview with Pál Dunay, Professor of NATO and European Security Issues, Bishkek, July 2016.

35

national border controls that, in fact, was allowed in case of emergency situations

under the Schengen acquis. However, with one state after another closing their

borders and blocking the overriding principle of free movement, it was not naïve to

believe that the Schengen system could, sooner or later, be finished, especially when

the EU Commission President, Donald Tusk, warned in January 2016 while speaking

at the European Parliament that if the EU did not put the refugee crisis under control,

the Schengen would be dissolved (Baczynska 2016).

Against this background, a key question I asked from my interlocutors was:

Has Schengen already ceased to exist, or is it premature to say that its days are

numbered? Opinions of all those interviewed regarding the Schengen zone being dead

or alive coincided on the fact that the Agreement is still breathing but urgently needs

therapy, otherwise the worst would be inescapable. Stefan Lehne holds the most

pessimistic view on the future of the free zone of movement by saying that although

“Schengen still exists” and the border controls and border checks “are legal under [its]

rules,” it might eventuate in common practice performed by the EU member states in

the future, thus undermining the integrity and sustainability of the Schengen every

time when a new crisis were to emerge. Furthermore, Lehna does not exclude a

possibility of Schengen being rebranded into a smaller core group of interested states

“if the EU remains divided on migration.”17

Among the reasons why the Schengen Agreement began to stumble amidst the

refugee crisis, Lehne states, are “not the incomplete regulatory framework or the lack

of capacity of the common institutions,” rather the political origin of the Agreement.

When agreeing on Schengen, the EU dismantled one of the key elements of a

conventional statehood, that is “control over entry into [one’s] territory” without

17 Interview with Lehne, op cit.

36

underpinning it by “creating a common political space and a sense of European

identity.” But a zone with no internal border control necessarily stipulates an effective

management of an external border, “common visa policies, and agreed rules on

asylum and immigration.” The refugee crisis has made it plainly clear that the EU has

failed to deliver on either of the three aforementioned components (Lehne 2016c).

As for the Schengen Agreement’s destiny, Lehne has developed three possible

scenarios: a looser Schengen, “hard-core Schengen,” or Schengen completely revised.

The first option depends entirely on the appearance of the EU itself, whether it would

consolidate and further revive its integration, or would move towards a more

amorphous block of countries. If the former, then the Schengen zone would be sound

and safe; if the latter, then “turning Schengen into a more robust and integrated

structure that can cope with continued high levels of migration flows” would

constitute an overwhelming task for the weakened Union with the national

governments undertaking individual attempts to diminish influxes of migrants and

refugees through imposition of restrictive policies that, in turn, could be fraught with

ensuing spreading of the Schengen’s suspension (2016b).

The second variant is not a sci-fi-esque invention. A new Schengen

combination to consist of Austria, Germany and Benelux countries18 was proposed by

the Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Finance Minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem to

their EU partners. Although such an idea was proved to be a variation on the topic of

how to save Schengen and was not taken seriously by the European Commission, it

managed to find a cohort of supporters maintaining that “only countries committed to

solidarity and faithful to implementing the rules should have a place in Schengen.”

This option has all chances to come to life in the form of “an ad hoc emergency

18 Benelux countries consist of Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

37

arrangement” if the current EU framework fails to overcome the refugee crisis. Of

course, the new core group could entail negative features such as leaving out those

resisting their exclusion, thus creating a new divide between the states, but it would

unite those “states committed to finding a common solution to the refugee challenge”

(Lehne 2016b).

When the anonymous employee at the Vienna based Austrian Institute for

European and Security Policy (AIES) was asked about a possibility of emerging of

mini-Schengen, she responded that it would not happen, especially in the case of the

Central European states as they do not possess the necessary means and tools to

ensure proper co-ordination among themselves. As for the Western EU states, the

same source does not see any added value in creating their own zone of free

movement, especially if letting less developed Central Europe deal with border and

migration issues on their own. The very idea, she claims, to establish another

Schengen or a zone of free-movement similar to it is wrapped in a wrong logic and

wrong thinking, and suggests, instead, to focus on the efforts of how to improve

functionality and co-ordination within the existing Schengen framework in order to

prepare for the future crises.19

The third scenario renders the most real as initial contours of how to reanimate

Schengen were outlined in the European Commission proposals of 2015.

Nevertheless, this reanimation would be hard given that restoring trustful and

confidential relationships among the EU frontline states and states “where most

asylum seekers have ended up” represents the key political challenge. The proposed

therapy would also include establishing effective control of the EU external border, “a

fair burden-sharing arrangement,” of both migrants and refugees and associated

19 Interview with the AIES anonymous employee, op cit.

38

finances, and intensive involvement of countries of origin as well as transit states to

regain control over the flow of people. That said, Schengen 2.0 should constitute a

long-term goal underpinned by “harmonized asylum and migration policies and

supported by effective and well-resourced institutions” (Lehne 2016b).

France’s Prime Minister, Manuel Walls, is pessimistic about the scale and

impact of the refugee crisis on the EU’s existence as a whole and on the Schengen

Agreement, in particular. During the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting in

Davos in January 2016, Walls urged for the imposition of more rigid external border

controls, otherwise the disintegration of the Schengen would come at a miniscule

price in comparison with the danger of the EU collapse. According to Walls,

It’s Europe that could die, not the Schengen area. If Europe can’t

protect its own borders, it’s the very idea of Europe that could be

thrown into a doubt. It could disappear, of course—the European

project, not Europe itself, not our values, but the concept we have of

Europe … Yes, that is in very grave danger. That’s why you need

border guards, border controls on the external borders of the European

Union. (The Irish Times 2016)

Heissel admits that closing the borders on the way of a huge wave of migrants

and refugees represents a natural reaction of the Schengen member states to protect

themselves from illegal intrusions. As for Schengen itself, the system remains

“untouched and unchanged,” but definitely will be adjusted to the future situations.

However, for all his optimism about the Schengen not to collapse, Heissel does not

leave options of mini-Schengen or Schengen-inside-Schengen off the table. But, he

says, it would take years of contentious negotiations and mutual calculations about the

direction the member states would want to go, that is why it is necessary not to waste

the European integration.20

20 Interview with Heissel, op cit.

39

One of my interlocutors believes that although the Schengen Agreement has

not been entirely abandoned by its member states, if it comes to the question to halt

the flow of, first of all, illegal migrants, nothing would keep them away from

suspending it completely, “at least till the external borders can be secured” even if it

constituted a severe blow to the European unity and integration.21 Judy Dempsey

(2016j), in turn, holds a similar view by saying that the EU hanging onto its

attachment that the Schengen keeps working as usual is incorrect. She claims that the

EU member states are responsible for the mess they have wound up with the

Schengen Agreement. From the very outset, their participation in the passport-free

travel zone was based on a wrong perception. The Schengen system does not limit

itself to only “a Europe without border controls,” it also involves gathering and

sharing of intelligence information that is clearly “not an automatic reflex for most

EU governments.”

Although they recognize the connection between the Schengen and protection

of the EU external border, EU member states have done little to support the agency

they themselves created to supervise the outer perimeter of the Union in terms of

material, technical items, finance and personnel.22 Moreover, some states even raised

difficulties to the operational work of FRONTEX, genuinely believing that external

border control constituted their exclusive sphere of competency. Another thing

member states were reluctant to understand is that Schengen was a ground to devise

the EU common asylum and migration policy. Instead, every state relied on its own

system to register migrants and asylum seekers even if that system was proved to be

inefficient (Dempsey 2016j).

21 Interview with Cibulka, op cit. 22 The European Agency for the Management of Operational Co-operation at the External Borders of

the Member States of the European Union, or FRONTEX, was established in 2004.

40

According to Dempsey, all these shortcomings—miserable intelligence co-

operation, “insufficient external border controls” and absence of an EU common

migration and asylum policy—have contributed to the Schengen’s erosion and its

transformation into a “free-for-all” zone. To mitigate it, she advises for the Schengen

system to be suspended up to one year to address the “abysmal failures” of Schengen

and the EU in coping with the refugee crisis.

The concern of the EU external border control is accentuated by the OSCE

employee, Alessandri, who says that the work of the FRONTEX is largely stipulated

by difficulties due to the geographical nature of the EU external border that has the

form of the water border with many islands and indented coastline. According to him,

the question does not reside how far defensive the approach to protect the external

border should be, rather how and by what means this border should be managed both

by the member states and the respective EU institutional agencies. As for Schengen,

says Alessandri, it has found itself not in the best condition thanks to the lack of trust

and acute information sharing among the member states.23

Rashid Gabdulhakov and Wolfgang Eminger agree that the Schengen will

continue to exist because it has requisites and mechanisms for crisis management. Of

course, in light of the refugee crisis, external border control will continue to be

reinforced, but a threat of a complete vanishing of Schengen system renders remote.24

Wolters, in turn, is less optimistic about Schengen’s ability of self-regulation by

stating that it “might find itself in a state when it formally still exists, but [is]

constantly undermined by emergency measures.” The Schengen system has not

capitulated, but it has lost a spirit of free movement and free border crossing,

especially when border posts within the area are established. Wolter’s stance on the

23 Interview with Alessandri, op cit.

41

Schengen Agreement and EU external border coincides with that of Alessandri’s that

it cannot be completely sealed off and secured because it is a coastline not so far from

the “other coast from where migrants come.”25

Dunay, in turn, is confident that the Schengen will not go down as long as it

constitutes an “important symbolic element” for the EU citizens. He does not share a

theory on mini-Schengen to be created, rather “a more cohesive smaller EU, [a] kind

of Europe of different speeds” that will define the future of the Schengen system.26

Already eighteen European countries have closed their borders, erected either

fences, or other barrier works on their borders, or introduced random passport

inspections.27 Sixteen of such states are both the EU and Schengen members, except

Norway that participates only in the Schengen Agreement. Such somewhat deviant

behavior—although temporarily allowed within the Schengen framework—could be

explained by a realist model of the immigration policy, the advocates of which argue

that raison d’état might explicate the way states manage and control migration flows

(Codagnone 2004). For realists, issues of security and strategy bear the highest

importance, whereas economic and social issues are downplayed. Security concerns

and potentiality of conflicts are the ones that shape and impact state’s migration

policy. Meanwhile, security is an essential component of a pursuit of state’s national

interests. In this context, migration policy is treated as a security concern, and

migrants and refugees are viewed as a potential threat to security of state and regime

(Meyers 2000).

24 Interview with Gabdulhakov, op cit. and with Eminger, op cit. 25 Interview with Wolters, op cit. 26Interview with Dunay, op cit. 27 These countries are Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France,

Germany, Hungary, Macedonia, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and

Sweden (BBC 2015a, Dempsey 2016j, etc.).

42

This is precisely the case with Hungary and its Prime Minister, Orbán, who

keeps framing migration and the refugee crisis as a security concern and calls upon

shutting down European borders to protect Hungary’s as well as the EU’s sovereignty

and national identity. Orbán claims that “every single migrant poses a public security

and terror risk” (The Guardian 2016). On the Syrian refugee crisis, he has said: “They

[migrants and refugees] are over-running us. They’re not just banging on the door,

they’re breaking the doors down on top of us. Our borders are under threat. Hungary

is under threat and so is the whole of Europe” (BBC 2015a).

Solidification of Euroskeptic and radical right parties

The slow erosion of the Schengen Agreement is happening in the context of the rapid

rise to the European political Olympus of the far-right and Euroskeptic parties, both

old and new. All these parties can be combined into a wider notion of radical right-

wing populism that has grown out of a lack of the strong EU leadership incapable to

find a coherent and collective response to the refugee crisis (Geis et al., 2016).

According to Pierre Vimont (2016), migration and refugees have come forward as a

trigger of “highly emotional popular reactions” entailing political repercussions that,

in turn, have substantially transfigured the political configurations in the European

Union MSs. “Migration has accelerated the transformation of Europe’s political

scene” as well as introduced a change in its political agenda with the issues of

integration and security being at the core of public discussions, says Vimont.

With a helping hand from populist parties and affiliated to them populist

groups, migration for many in Europe has become synonymous with terrorism and

Islamism, especially in the aftermath of attacks in France, Belgium and Germany in

late-2015 and in the first half of 2016. Incidents of sexual assaults of local women in

Germany and Sweden in the 2016 New Year’s Eve known to have been committed by

43

Muslim migrants and refugees further aggravated the picture of refugee crisis

unleashing a narrative of the “overall attacks on the values of Western societies.” The

third ingredient of the migration melting pot added by populists was a topic of “the

free movement of EU citizens inside the union” being under threat on the part of

hordes of migrants and refugees from the MENA region. Taken together, these multi-

directional sources of anxiety planted by populism have brought an added value to “a

very antagonistic debate” by creating a volatile political ground for incumbent

governments of the EU member states with little room for maneuvering. “Today in

Europe, populists are leading the game and shaping the migration debate,” writes

Vimont (2016).

If to look at the composition of the European Parliament since the last

elections in 2014, one can notice a sudden success of the aforementioned Euroskeptic

and far-right parties.28 Namely in 2014 when migration started firmly occupying the

headlines of the European media, with the year becoming one of a tectonic

breakthroughs of Euroskepticism at the EU level. Although the overall number of

Euroskeptics comprised 98 out of 751 (or 13%) of Members of the European

Parliament (MEPs), they have managed to occupy an important niche to develop and

promote their anti-establishment agenda. So far there are two major radical right-wing

coalitions within the Euro-parliament such as the Europe of Freedom and Direct

Democracy (EFD) chaired by Nigel Farage, the former head of the UKIP, and the

Europe of Nations and Freedom chaired by Marine Le Pen, the FN head. Besides,

there is a number of non-attached, so-called Non-Inscrits, who represent a

hodgepodge of the political ideologies ranging from communism and social liberalism

to populism and neo-Nazism (Ria Novosti 2014).

28 The elections to the European Parliament take place every five years. Hence, the current partisan and

44

Out of 30 Euroskeptic parties presented in the Euro-parliament, 18 are right,

11 are left and only one party is center-right. Hence, it can be said that the overall

dominating tendency in the Euroskeptic wing of the European Parliament is rightist.

As long as Euroskeptics largely use the fear of migrants and refugees to drive their

political agendas, refugee crisis as an existential threat to the EU renders for the

majority of them, both right and left. At that, the interesting fact is while most of the

anti-establishment parties claim that the refugee crisis signifies inevitable danger for

the European integration, and a significant portion of them would not mind and, even,

push for a fundamental reconfiguration of the EU favoring its complete disintegration

(Dennison and Pardijs 2016).

Theory of the ‘Other’ in action

From a theoretical point of view, the attitude and approach of the Euroskeptic and

radical right-wing parties towards migrants and refugees could be examined through

the prism of the Theory of the Other. In fact, ‘Otherness’ is a philosophical and

sociological concept that embraces a dichotomy of the ‘Other’ and the ‘Self’. To put it

simply, the ‘Other’ is identified with a stranger that differs from an indigenous

individual or a group represented by the ‘Self’. The ‘Self’ perceives itself as a norm

and judges the ‘Other’ that does not meet this norm. ‘Otherness’ could take many

forms, according to race, nationality, political and social affiliation, etc. (Melani

2009).

In the case of the refugee crisis, ‘Otherness’ personified by migrants and

refugees is often (though not always) reflected in a different religion (Christianity vs.

Islam) and origin (native born vs. immigrants). For example, Le Pen while recalling

and commemorating the victims of the Charlie Hebdo attack in 2015 during her

coalitional composition will remain in place till the next elections in 2019.

45

speech at the Oxford University in September 2015 called those who committed the

act “barbarians” (one of the perpetrators had been found and identified as a Syrian

refugee) (Oxford Union Society 2015). Hungary’s Orbán, in turn, designates the

refugee influx to Europe as “a poison” (The Guardian 2016). Frauke Petry, the AfD

leader, draws a comparison of migrants and refugees to “a compost heap”

(Independent 2016b). These rude and aggressive metaphors encapsulate the idea of a

rigid non-acceptance of the ‘Other’ by the ‘Self’, meaning that migrants and refugees

are not welcomed to the European soil.

That migration has always constituted one of the principal drivers of

Euroskeptic and radical right-wing parties testify results of investigation on the

concept of the European populism conducted by the research and advisory group

“Counterpoint.” By using populist frames, clichés and slogans as well as promises to

re-democratize and re-bureaucratize the EU, the European populists are gaining

momentum and increasing their electoral support while maintaining a certain level of

uncertainty and public anxiety over the refugee crisis (Fieschi et al., 2013).

From the perspective of the AIES anonymous employee, although the refugee

crisis continues to occupy the agenda of the Euroskeptic and far-right parties, it is

rather a mixture of overlapping issues of socio-economic character that have managed

to ensure their rise to power. According to same source, the refugee crisis creates

favorable conditions for these parties to acquire extra bonuses to their political

campaigns, but it is difficult to assess the extent to which the refugee crisis is

influencing the Euroskeptic and far-right parties.29 For Gabdulhakov, the issue with

the refugee crisis appears “highly politicized” with the far-right parties obviously

taking advantage of the impotence of their mainstream opponents to control the

29 Interview with an AIES anonymous employee, op cit.

46

inflow of people, strengthening “their own political ambitions” and making “strong

statements.”30

To describe the degree of influence of the refugee crisis on the EU political

landscape, Cibulka uses the notion of “encouragement,” meaning that the crisis with

migrants and refugees fuels the “Euroskeptic and far-right parties across the EU” but

with a different effect. According to him, in Belgium, France, the Netherlands and the

UK the migrants and refugees who’ve failed to integrate “have caused social tensions

within these countries,” thus creating a comfortable ground for anti-establishment

parties to flourish and advance their political positions. In the Central and Eastern EU

member states, the refugee crisis has provoked the rise of Islamophobia, “even

though, except for Hungary, they have not been flooded with refugees.”31

Heissel evaluates the extent of influence of the refugee crisis on the activities

of the Euroskeptic and radical right-wing parties as huge, because they feed on

people’s “fear, dissatisfaction and desires for simple solutions,” he says. Thanks to

those parties’ strategizing, many Europeans have lost faith in the EU (as well as their

own governments) and started to perceive the EU as a bureaucratic construction that

takes unilateral decisions over the member states, resulting in “miscommunication

between the European governments and their constituencies.”32

The usage of simplistic solutions by the anti-establishment parties is also

mentioned by Alessandri who explains it through a primitive psychological

perception of people who often tend to buy the simple way out of very complicated

situations, because they are easier to understand and relate to. He adds that populist

parties have calculated and felt the pulse of the public mood in the EU member states

30 Interview with Gabdulhakov, op cit. 31 Interview with Cibulka, op cit. 32 Interview with Heissel, op cit.

47

and understood well that a big part of the EU citizens is actually not so happy about

the situation in the politics and the economy of the EU.33 Eminger, in turn, argues that

the refugee crisis continues to be quite influential for the political performance of the

Euroskeptic and radical right-wing parties who sideline with the disaffected part of

the public, dissatisfied with their own governments and the EU.34

Lehne sees in the growing influence of the Euroskeptic and far-right parties as

a massive problem for the EU.35 According to him, radical right-wing populism that

gains its political weight on the wave of public frustration over the refugee crisis is

quite dangerous for the European project as long as it rejects the EU fundamental

principles such as “shared sovereignty, supranational authority, compromises between

different interests, and mutual tolerance” while promoting the ideology of xenophobia

and nationalism. He tags populism as “the dark side of the EU” because it opposes

“both the EU’s goals and its working methods.” Populists renounce interdependence

and pluralism, distance from negotiations36 and “convergence of view,” and praise

absolute national sovereignty. Nevertheless, populists, claims Lehne (2016a) entering

the European Parliament could constitute a positive feature as they bring fresh energy

and blood into the European politics and revive debates on issues of major concern of

EU citizens.

While the European political landscape is one thing, the political constellation

within the EU MSs represents a different picture. The anti-establishment parties are

unevenly divided with ones “in power in several EU member states” such as Hungary

and Poland, for instance, being “either as majority governments or as parts of

33 Interview with Alessandri, op cit. 34 Interview with Eminger, op cit. 35 Interview with Lehne, op cit. 36 It can explain why major Euroskeptic and far-right parties for a long time could not manage to create

coalitions within the European Parliament after the elections in 2014.

48

coalitions” (Lehne 2016a). To trace more closely how these parties show themselves

on the level of nation states, I selected several EU members with the most prominent

Euroskeptic and far-right parties to bring insight of their recent activities vis-à-vis the

refugee crisis.

The case of France’s Front National

The French party, Front National, could be considered the most hateful and critical of

the refugee crisis as well as the EU and thus being a Euroskeptic and radical right-

wing party. FN was founded back in 1972 by Jean-Marine Le Pen who was replaced

as the party leader in 2012 by his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who decided to modernize

and sort of de-demonize the party of its past as to make it “a respectable and reputable

party” (Fieschi et al. 2013, p. 471). Back then, in 2012, Marine Le Pen was promoting

a harsh stance on migration by reiterating that France should have stopped accepting

migrants, otherwise the native Frenchmen would eventually all be replaced with

immigrants. As a way of replacing this with a more cogent argument, Le Pen

appealed to the French Republic and its secular values, “which are said to be

threatened by immigrants or Muslims.” Indeed, Le Pen’s first electoral successes

happened as a consequence of her ruthless attacks on migration (p. 477).

Soon after, Le Pen began to succeed with the same narrative. In the 2014

European elections, the FN guaranteed itself almost 25% of the vote, securing 24 of

France’s overall 74 seats in the EU Parliament. In the local elections of March 2014,

as well, Le Pen’s FN party won twelve mayoralties, whereas in 2015 in the first round

it had obtained the first position in 6 out of 13 French regions severely beating the

ruling President François Hollande’s Socialists (Lichfield 2014). The FN ensured its

success thanks to a harsh, but, nevertheless, appealing pre-election rhetoric that

managed to find its way to the hearts of many French electorate:

49

Putting a stop to immigration is of urgent social need. Solidarity does

not just happen. Solidarity is a sentiment that can only exist as long as

there is a community of values, a common cultural base, within which

everyone recognizes him or herself. And ever since our societies have

been organized as nations, the nation is the natural framework for the

exercise of solidarity. […] we recognize that we are of the same

family. And this family is France […]. [M]ass immigration carries

with it the seeds of the destruction of our national solidarity.

(Counterpoint 2014, p. 21)

This passage by Le Pen’s agitational speech before the EU 2014 Parliamentary

elections still holds actual as migration and refugee crisis represents a perceived threat

to the national security and national identity of France for many, not just FN

supporters. From the very outset, the French government — although under the

pressure from the FN and Nicolas Sarkozy’s center-right Union for a Popular

Movement (UMP) — took “a much more restrictive attitude towards refugees” than

its German counterpart (Lehne 2016b).

After a more or less persuasive performance of the FN in France and in the

EU, the chances on whether Le Pen would make it into the second round of the

France’s 2017 Presidential Elections and even seize the Elysee Palace sharply

increased. Eminger believes that Le Pen has all chances to beat her opponent in the

2017 presidential elections.37 Wolters also looks positive about Le Pen’s chances to

replace Holland next year admitting, nevertheless, that the elections would not be an

easy fight for FN.38 Vimont, as well, feels confident about the presidential chances of

Le Pen dwelling on the results of France 2015 regional elections and the renewed

image of the FN that today represents a party of offended and disenchanted people

“who have suffered from the failures of previous and current French governments” to

provide credible alternatives to current problems and challenges (Dempsey 2015a).

37 Interview with Eminger, op cit. 38 Interview with Wolters, op cit.

50

However, experts also think that Le Pen’s emergence as the new French

president would yield disaster for Europe. Steven Erlanger, London bureau chief of

The New York Times, explains FN’s success with “the failures and vacuum of the

center right, the weak conservatism of the Socialist Party and the inability of the EU

to respond to serious European challenges.” Erlanger thinks that the French political

system on its own will manage to isolate Le Pen from the presidency. Ulrike Guérot,

Founder and director of the European Democracy Lab at the European School of

Governance, underlines that France’s problems — economic, political, social as well

as the refugee crisis — give a blank check to Le Pen and the FN to promote their

means and solutions on how to save France, thus increasing her chances to become a

president. Martin Quencez, Program officer in the Paris office of the German

Marshall Fund of the U.S., banks on the further “normalization” of the FN so that it

could cease to be “a credible alternative to mainstream politics” and, thus, lose a part

of its electoral support (Dempsey 2015a).

Germany’s Alternative for Germany Party

France’s main EU partner, Germany, has also watched the emergence of its own anti-

immigrant, “nationalist, Euroskeptic and xenophobic” movement, the Alternative for

Germany Party, that within three years since its establishment in 2013 has managed to

earn support of a significant portion of the German public. In the 2014 European

elections, the AfD ended up fifth in Germany, thereby sending to the EU Parliament

seven members. In turn, the 2015 local elections were marked by the first seats in the

German western land, Hamburg, that was preceded by the victory of 6.1% of the

votes. In May the party entered into another federal land, Bremen, securing 5.5% of

the votes. By the end of 2015 the AfD had held its representation in five out of 16

federal lands in Germany, considered as a success. In the 2016 state election, the AfD

51

doubled its support adding another five German federal lands (Baden-Württemberg,

Rhineland-Palatinate, Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and Berlin) thereby

stealing votes from the ruling partisan coalition that made the AfD the fifth most

powerful party in Germany (Dempsey 2016k).

What stands behind the success of the Alternative for Germany? First,

opposition to Merkel’s politics emerged because of the global and euro-zone debt

crisis. However, till 2013 her critics failed to establish any rational political party.

Then came the refugee crisis as “a major catalyst.” Prior to that, no one party had

dared to criticize Chancellor Merkel’s politics and socio-political vision, but the AfD

dared to do so. It opposes German migration policy with “nationally propagated

‘welcome culture’” at its core, plumps for a heavy restriction of migrants and refugees

into the country and a ban of any Islamic symbols by negating a place for Islam in

Germany. Initially, the mainstream parties did not take the AfD seriously, believing

that it would not survive another round of political fighting and, eventually, dissolve.

Contrary to their expectations, however, the AfD proved resilient, becoming “an

established force in the German party landscape” (Deutsche Welle 2016b).

How long will the AfD’s political standing last? This is thought to depend on

the internal political and economic situation in Germany, the prospects of potential

terrorist attacks in the future and, of course, on the intensity of the refugee crisis

development. According to a 2016 poll, the AfD renders the third largest party in

Germany with 16% of the votes, being ahead of the Greens, the Left Party and the

Free Democratic Party (FDP), making the way only to the ruling coalition of

Merkels’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP)

(Deutsche Welle 2016a).

52

However, the AfD’s strong political performance does not reflect the same

strong internal structure. The party is not united as it seems. This is mentioned by the

two of my interlocutors who say that the AfD suffers from cleavages from within,

lack of a comprehensive strategic program of action and a coherent political agenda.

They exist as a response to the huge frustration of the German people on how the

refugee crisis is being handled, or not at all, by the German authorities, in general, and

Merkel, in particular.39 In fact, in 2015, the AfD survived an internal split into two

factions: an anti-immigrant headed by the current AfD leader, Petry, and an

economically-oriented faction led by AfD’s former leader, Bernd Lucke, who in the

end founded a new party named the Alliance for Progress and Renewal (ALFA)

(Deutsche Welle 2016b).

Dunay is more optimistic about the AfD, saying that it can, ultimately, change

the political wind in Germany and even nominate their candidate to the 2017

Chancellor elections.40 Dempsey (2016k) is caught in the middle stating that despite

AfD’s impressive success during the state elections in 2015 and 2016, it is still

rendered not handshakeable as none of the parties, either in the left, or in the center

would let themselves to step into the coalition with such an anti-immigrant, anti-Islam

xenophobic party—the reason the AfD still stays outside the Bundestag walls.

Opinions differ, but, there is no doubt that the AfD has already spoiled the

mood to the governing coalition of the CDU and SPD and held its hands to shattering

the political throne under Merkel by building its entire political campaign on the

strong opposition to her decision to indiscriminately welcome hundreds of thousands

of migrants and refugees. The AfD’s harsh rhetoric on immigration has paved the way

to the criticism of Merkel by her closest allies from the Christian Social Union (CSU)

39 Interview with Eminger, op cit., and with Wolters, op cit.

53

and the SDP, Horst Seehofer and Sigmar Gabriel, respectively. The former insists on

putting a threshold on the number of migrants and refugees arriving in Germany,

whereas the latter strongly expresses that Merkel “had underestimated the challenge

in trying to integrate so many refugees seeking asylum” (Dempsey 2016g, 2016i).

Austria’s Freedom Party and other trends

Another major pain in the neck for Merkel constitutes Austria that has been

conventionally considered as Germany’s indisputable ally in the EU. But the refugee

crisis has changed that by bringing to the political scene the radical right-wing party

FPÖ that during the 2014 EU elections gained 19.7% or one in five of all votes,

translating them into four seats in the European Parliament. In the 2016 Austrian

presidential elections, the FPÖ’s candidate, Höffer, may have been emblematic of

having nearly produced the far-right head of state in the center of Europe and

strengthened the trend of rejecting mainstream parties in favor of their opponents

from the right extreme of the political spectrum. They have also shown that the

Austrian public is evenly polarized on the issue of migration and refugee crisis. The

FPÖ has managed to “tap into the growing fears and anxieties of a country that was

taking in many refugees” and convert them into its own use.

Mr President, we need to recognize that the removal of border controls

has not just brought us advantages, such as convenient travel. These

open borders have also naturally resulted in illegal immigration, while

also making it child’s play for international criminal organizations to

operate throughout Europe. You will all be aware of the undesirable

side-effects: Homes have been burgled, houses stripped bare, cars

stolen, people trafficked, while we in this House seem almost

oblivious. (Counterpoint 2014, 21)

The increasing popularity of the FPÖ coupled with the never ending refugee crisis are

expected to induce changes into “the face of Austrian politics” in political tandem

40 Interview with Dunay, op cit.

54

with Germany (Dempsey 2016h).

In the Netherlands, in turn, there is the PVV, famous for its controversial

member, Geert Wilders, that stands on the same platform with the FN, FPÖ, AfD and

other far-right parties. In the 2014 European elections, the PVV secured 13.3% of

votes gaining five seats in the Euro-parliament. Wilders himself is “well-known for

his strident criticisms of Islam and Muslims.” It is no wonder that he has not changed

his rhetoric when the Syrian refugee crisis broke out. His party openly challenges the

Netherlands’ as well as Germany’s stance on migration, thereby adding bonus credits

to the anti-immigrant and Euroskeptic political forces in the EU. However, according

to the latest polls conducted in 2016, the PVV has seen a drop in its electoral support

of up to 22%, but still remains the biggest party in the Netherlands. The possible

reason for this is said to be the reduction in the number of refugees coming to the

country (Dutch News 2016a, 2016b).

The overall question remains: For how long will the populist and Euroskeptic

parties continue to gain strength in the EU? They obviously are framing the debate on

migration and the refugee crisis, leaving the mainstream parties lagging behind in the

fear of being paralyzed by populism in the upcoming elections. Moreover, Piotr

Buras, Head of the Warsaw office of the European Council on Foreign Relations,

argues that not only paralyzing is threatening to the incumbent parties, but also a

gradual backing down of the “fundamental principles of human rights, civil liberties,

equality, and openness out of panic fear of a populist surge.” Koert Debeuf, a research

fellow at University of Oxford, claims that the populist and Euroskeptics are

adamantly configured to stay in power positions as long as it is possible, especially in

the light of the paralysis of the EU to find workable solutions to the refugee challenge

(Dempsey 2016e).

55

Frederik Erixon, Director of the European Center for International Political

Economy, says that it is the mainstream parties who have responsibility for allowing

the populism to step into the power configuration, because they have converted into

“smug, desolate, machine-like operations with few ideas about the big political issues

of our time,” thereby scaring off a part of their electorate to the populists. Gianni

Riotta, Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, compares populism with a

contagious disease that infects every political and institutional body of the EU it

touches while living on its money. Fabian Zuleeg, Chief executive of the European

Policy Center, thinks that as long as the EU faces fundamental challenges like the

refugee crisis, “populist parties will continue to gain ground in much of Europe”

(Dumpsey 2016e).

The ‘Brexit’ knock-on effect

The populist and Euroskeptic UKIP, which arranged the exit of Great Britain out of

the EU, the so-called ‘Brexit’, has undoubtedly encouraged the populists and

Euroskeptics across the Union’s block to further bear pressure upon their respective

mainstream parties and stir up their constituencies not to fear to express their genuine

concerns and opinions to the face of their respective governments (Geis et al. 2016).

From the very outset, the Brexit campaign has been wrapped up in the set of

prejudices, speculations and anti-EU assumptions which created a very ambiguous

platform for the British Euroskeptics that has born its fruit, notwithstanding. In this

respect it renders very challenging to find out to what extent the refugee crisis was

decisive to make Britain quit the EU, and what this withdrawal would mean for the

future of the Union.

Marc Pierini (2016) of the Carnegie Europe does not call into question that the

refugee crisis and migration concerns more broadly were driving the “Leave”

56

campaign that eventually won the referendum. This stance is entirely complemented

by Hungarian leader, Orbán, who does not hesitate to name the massive refugee influx

and the EU’s inability to handle it as the prime reasons for Brexit: “If a country has to

leave the EU to stop bad migration policies this is very bad news” (EurActiv 2016).

The Austrian Foreign Minister, Sebastian Kurz, also says that the refugee crisis has

shaped the outcome of the British referendum, while warning that it could trigger the

exits of other EU members and eventual breakup of the Union. “Europe can collapse

because of the refugee crisis and uncontrolled migration,” warns Kurz (RT 2016).

The refugee crisis and borders were the three magical words which stipulated

the substance and the outcome of the UK’s referendum on the EU membership,

argues Alessandri. Although the UK has never participated in the Schengen

Agreement, the key arguments of the “Leave” campaign were getting back control of

national borders when leaving the EU and re-establishing national sovereignty, and

the simple fear — real or unsubstantiated — of incoming foreigners.41

Bruno Macaes (2016) of the Carnegie Europe also thinks that the Brexit

campaign was built on three simple, but powerful words of “taking back control,” that

is, control of the UK’s policies, citizens’ lives and, of course, migration. Macaes

explains that the major complaint made by the British public was not about Brussels

bureaucracy being in charge of everything related to the migration issues, rather “that

no one was ultimately responsible.” By saying ‘No’ to the EU the British citizens

opted for the regaining of this feeling of control back to their national sphere of

competency.

According to the AIES anonymous employee, migration and the refugee crisis

did shape the agenda of the Brexit campaign, but in combination with other socio-

41 Interview with Alessandri, op cit.

57

political issues which, eventually, said their word in achieving the final outcome of

the referendum.42 Lehne argues that the refugee crisis acted as a factor in favor of the

UK’s decision to leave the EU, but not as a decisive one, as long as Great Britain was

not as much affected by the coming migrants and refugees from the MENA region as

many other EU MSs. What was actually bothering the hearts and minds of the Brexit

advocates, in addition to a frail economy, were the intra-EU migration processes, i.e.

the internal moving of the EU citizens. But in order to adjust Brexit to the current

European circumstances, Leave advocates “managed to conflate EU migration with

the refugee crisis,” bringing them the desired result.43 The issue of the internal EU

migration was developed by Cibulka who mentions that it was “the influx of [two]

million Poles within one decade” into the UK contributed to the development of a

final positive referendum outcome, rather than that of sudden refugees.44

One of the interlocutors argues that the factor of the refugee crisis was

presented in and around the Brexit campaign as an “excuse” and a speculative

position to persuade the UK citizens to vote against Great Britain’s membership in the

EU that, in turn, perfectly fitted into the context of the populist and Euroskeptic

upsurge in Europe.45 Almost the same narrative is maintained by Heissel who

describes Brexit as a nostalgia for the Great Britain’s past “glory” being enveloped in

a populist cover.

Brexit was built on populist ideas, Euroskepticism, fear of unknown

and uncertain future. UKIP sold the idea of the better past by

promoting an image of the Great British Empire. Refugee crisis and

migration just came handy.46

42 Interview with an AIES anonymous employee, op cit. 43 Interview with Lehne, op cit. 44 Interview with Cibulka, op cit. 45 Interview with Gabdulhakov, op cit. 46 Interview with Heissel, op cit.

58

Eminger, in turn, does not think that the refugee crisis constituted a one and

only issue within the UKIP campaign that helped them and the other Brexit

propagators to drive their country out of the EU. He believes that the Britons

themselves contributed to creation of an environment being positive towards Brexit

that was accelerated by

… traditional problems within Britain itself. Some segments of the

Britain’s population still experience empire nostalgia, perceive their

country as extremely special in the world which, in turn, leads to a

reality distortion. The refugee crisis came as an additional factor to

this.47

That the Britons still think and discourse in terms of a once glorious past of

their beloved country has cast a shadow on the debate around Brexit and its whole

anti-EU political campaign is concurred by Wolters as well:

… Cameron’s clientele, voter-clientele, are marginalized conservative

voters who think and are proud of England as a former empire. And

they don’t want to be dictated by Brussels or Berlin. [The refugee

crisis] exacerbates the discourse, the debate in Britain with UKIP […],

but not to the extent you see it in Germany with PEGIDA, or Le Pen in

France.48

Migrants and refugees helped the “UKIP to be politically more realistic,” to meet the

demands the EU was caring about, but in substance “Brexit in Britain would be very

much politically-constitutional.”49

According to Dunay, “the British did not go out of the EU because of

migration, but [migration] was a factor in the campaign.” For Dunay, Brexit up to

99% consisted of an issue of an “old conception of sovereignty,” that the Britons were

quite able to effectively manage their own affairs without being guided by

bureaucratic officials from Brussels or, worse, Berlin. The island mentality also

played its role. Dunay does not exclude a possibility that this unwillingness to be in

47 Interview with Eminger, op cit. 48 Interview with Wolters, op cit.

59

one European carriage might have been dictated by a “hidden anti-German attitude”

and a feeling of their own exceptionality. “Migration was only a good call name,”

says Dunay.50

On the wake of Brexit ‘yes’ vote, leaders of other Euroskeptic and populist

parties made a promise to organize their own referendums on the EU-membership.

For instance, Le Pen said that if elected as President, she would demand full

sovereignty for France from the EU. In her opinion, Brexit constituted the most

significant event since 1989 when the Berlin Wall had fallen. Le Pen has said:

That is Brexit […] which clearly show[s] that the EU is being rejected.

Something fundamental is happening: the comeback of nations, of

sovereign states, with people, with frontiers. People now want to be in

charge of their destinies; for a long time, they were prevented from

doing so. (BBC 2016a)

As long as the UK were to free itself from a supranational dictate of the EU — in Le

Pen’s words, “the Brussels wall” — France should do the same. “Now, if at the end of

the negotiations, the European Union tells me no, then I will tell the French people

that there is no option but to get out of the European Union” (BBC 2016a).

Le Pen’s confidence, however, in an eventual successful ‘Frexit’, if you will,

is not shared by many experts. Several of my respondents also do not believe that

Frexit would actually happen, because it would entail a massive fallout, not

necessarily a positive one. France would remain all alone against Germany which is

way more powerful both politically and economically (if not militarily) and which

unilaterally leads the EU. What might prevent France from ceasing its EU

membership despite Le Pen’s strong intention to make it happen is a domestic factor

of public opinion that would likely resist favoring Frexit under pressure of heated

49 Ibid. Wolters frames discourse about Brexit in the present and future tense because at the time of

conducting this interview it was April, and it was unclear how the vote on Brexit would turn out. 50 Interview with Dunay, op cit.

60

debates and discussions.51

According to Dunay, the main loss for France if quitting the EU would be an

economic one, because France heavily depends on the economic transfers circulation

within the Union, for example, in the agricultural sector. France is heavily integrated

into the EU’s structures and institutions, and the French economy is intertwined with

that of Germany. It would thus be suicidal for France to cut off its vitalities with the

EU. Brexit, instead, Dunay insists, has conveyed a clear message “to the other

member states that if they follow [the UK example], they will not be treated nicely.”52

But what about Brexit’s impact on the EU as a whole? Will the EU keep on

going on the same track without Great Britain? The answer is not a clear ‘yes’, or

‘no’, but leaning towards the former. The EU is already in the process of developing a

new post-Brexit narrative named in the opening statement of the 2016 Bratislava

Declaration as “Determined to make a success of the EU 27” (Dempsey 2016h). Rosa

Balfour, Senior Fellow in the Europe Program at the German Marshall Fund of the

U.S., and Fraser Cameron, Director of the EU-Russia Center, do not doubt that the

EU will keep functioning, but they fairly ask the question of what kind of EU would it

be? Balfour presumes that Brexit will make the EU reinvent itself, but this reinvention

could become fruitful if only “the EU seizes the opportunity to understand the causes

of today’s crises, rather than focus on the symptoms.” UK Prime Minister David

Cameron, however, calls upon the restoration of the EU’s internal unity and solidarity

and making it “more relevant to the citizens,” otherwise, he argues, “there may be

more exits around the corner” (Dempsey 2016a).

Kris Bledowski, Council director and senior economist at the Manufacturers

Alliance for Productivity and Innovation, does not attach so much importance to the

51 Interview with and AIES anonymous employee, op cit., and with Wolters, op cit.

61

UK decision to leave the EU by reminding that it was well functioning prior Britain

and would do so after. In his opinion, it became “an influential component of the

union,” but could not manage to transform itself into “an indispensable one, such as

Germany.” However, he does admit that in the entity of Britain that contributed its

added value economically, financially, diplomatically and militarily, the EU “will lose

an influential voice.” Lehne also does not hasten to call Brexit a tragedy for the EU by

underlining that “the UK for a long time has been a semidetached member state”

staying outside the Eurozone and the Schengen. His colleague, Bruno Maçães, adds

that the EU, being a “regulatory power” would stay unaffected, but in spheres such as

foreign policy and security where the UK plays a significant role, the EU will lose its

“influence, prestige and soft power.” The overall conclusion is that although Brexit’s

impact is and will be heavily felt, it is not destructible for the EU’s long-term

economic and political experiment (Dempsey 2016a).

Strengthening of internal East-West polarization

When the possibility of Brexit was still looming somewhere in 2017, one outcome of

the refugee crisis which was clearly visible was that the EU had found itself divided

like never before. This division ran among the member states like a black cat on the

issue of the migrant and refugee re-allocation in 2015, and since then there has been

no progress in sealing it up. Refugee quota system, a plan that was designed and

proposed by the EU Commission as an urgent and temporary as well as voluntary

remedy for the refugee crisis to resettle a certain number of migrants and refugees,

whose arrivals in the EU have overwhelmed Greece and Italy, was soon translated

into mandatory imposition on every member state (Gasanov 2015; McAuley 2015).

52 Interview with Dunay, op cit.

62

The biggest malcontents have been the Central European states who

challenged the idea of accepting refugees both on voluntary and mandatory basis.

Even the threat of fine of 250,000 euros for every unreceived person did not scare the

governments of Central Europe, which from the very outset resorted to anti-

immigrant political platform. The Czech Foreign Minister, Lubomir Zaoralek, for

example, said that it was a wrong step to introduce a proposal with no agreement on

it, whereas his Polish homologue, Witold Waszczykowski, spoke out of the idea as

“foolish.” Hungarian Foreign Minister, Peter Szijjarto, in turn, criticized both the

quota system and the fine penalty by calling it “a dead-end street” and

“blackmailing,” respectively (McAuley 2015). And the Czech President, Milos

Zeman, went even further by arguing that the quota system was aimed at depriving

states their “sovereign right to decide their own asylum policies,” and that it was

doomed to fail since all migrants and refugees would go to Germany, notwithstanding

(BBC 2015b).

According to Dempsey (2016b), the problem of accepting refugees by Central

European states lies not in the numbers of migrants and refugees, per se — Hungary

or Czech Republic could, nevertheless, digest a few thousand — but in that the

refugees embrace a totally different, non-Christian, religion. The Central European

countries refuse taking in Muslims for national, social and security reasons. In the

opinion of Orbán, this unfair and mandatory refugee quota scheme as well as a

unilateral decision made by Merkel to open Germany’s borders and then seek a wide

EU solidarity exemplify a “moral imperialism” as the EU’s guiding principle.

Dempsey (2016m) argues that this East-West divide on the refugee issue

manifests itself in a confrontation of the EU’s two competing agendas on the refugee

crisis, one being led by the German Chancellor Merkel and another by the Hungarian

63

Prime Minister Orbán. Merkel’s agenda rests upon moral and humanitarian reasons

that it is Europe’s obligation as a bastion of democracy, human rights and European

values to open its doors to those in need of security, shelter and basic human needs.

Contrary to that, Orbán’s agenda holds that national governments and not the EU

should define Europe’s future. He insists on vesting more in national, rather than

supranational, powers in dealing with refugee crisis even in the aftermath of

Hungary’s October 2, 2016, refugee quota referendum that failed due to not achieving

the required 50% turnout. Although almost 3.3 millions of Hungarians voted against

the plan, a low turnout did not make the referendum outcome legally binding. Voters

had to choose between two alternatives, either to support or reject the EU proposed

reallocation plan. Nevertheless, Orbán has already promised to “make Brussels [and

Berlin] understand that it cannot ignore the will of [the] Hungarian voters”—at the

minimum, politicians.

Merkel’s agenda is about using solidarity as binding glue to keep the EU float

in its internal fight with the refugee crisis, while Orbán promotes its agenda to

downplay this feeling of solidarity in order to show other MSs, especially Hungary’s

neighbors, the price they would bear — higher crime rates, rape incidents, increasing

unemployment and possible terrorist acts — if they agree on the relocation plan.

Taken together, these agendas undermine the unity and social cohesion of the Union

exposing the fragility of its institutions “as well as lack of confidence of EU and

national leaders” (Dempsey 2016m).

Heissel agrees on the statement that the refugee crisis has negatively

contributed to the EU’s unity by creating a division that shows the existence of

different competing interests and visions among the member states. According to him,

such division hampers an ability to find and then implement the common response to

64

the refugee crisis, thus presenting “a significant challenge for the EU.”53 Eminger as

well does not exclude a possibility of the refugee crisis to divide the EU even deeper

than it is already, whereas Gabdulhakov argues that despite all divisions, the refugee

crisis could serve as “a good test,” but also “an opportunity” for the EU.54

Rem Korteweg, Senior research fellow at the Centre for European Uniform,

does not find it surprising that the refugee quota system has divided the EU into two

camps of pros and cons. He thinks that this system does not and would not work until

the EU reforms its asylum and migration policy. Andrew Michta, Professor of

National Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, in turn, believes that

confrontation and division between the Western and Eastern EU members testifies to

the EU’s fundamental structural problem: “the lack of a mechanism to centrally

manage the processing of asylum claims and to coordinate relocations” (Dempsey

2016f). Lehne also holds that the “East and West are far apart on how to deal with the

influx of migrants” (Grabbe and Lehne 2016).

One of my interlocutors places the East-West division into the form of a

struggle “between the EU federalist elites” represented by the older member states

and the newer ones.55 Alessandri, in turn, thinks that the refugee crisis has divided not

only the EU, but Europe in general. He means, for instance, the divisive tensions

between Greece and Macedonia and other Balkan countries over the border issues and

decision on which migrants and refugees to let through, and which not.56 Another

respondent from the AIES also maintains the narrative that the refugee crisis has

created internal division in the EU that manifests itself on several levels: within the

EU Commission, among the member states, their political systems, and within

53 Interview with Heissel, op cit. 54 Interview with Eminger, op cit., and with Gabdulhakov, op cit. 55 Interview with Cibulka, op cit.

65

societies. The fraction among the member states, for example, is clearly seen when it

comes to the EU decisions and their implementation. In our case, this is the

challenged, not implemented and even sabotaged refugee quota system. A split within

societies also shows in terms of appearance and steady rise of radical right-wing

movements and parties.57

The same interlocutor underlines the incapability of the European Commission

that designed and promoted the relocation plan to find the common denominator that

would enforce the member states to oblige and implement the Commission’s decision.

But without the right balance between the EU and national spheres of competency it

would be very hard to persuade the EU members to stick to the rules and

commitments they made.58

Dunay asks not to overestimate the scale of the so-called East-West division,

since there are some divisive elements in the East itself that can be noticed. For

example, the Baltic states and Poland—a member of the Visegrad Group that acts as a

lighthouse in the opposition to Brussels—are already reluctantly accepting a tiny

portion of migrants and refugees. Moreover, still the influence of Germany in Central

Europe is rated more than the influence of Hungary or Poland.59 Wolters thinks that

although the refugee crisis does draw division within the EU, the Central European

EU members reject the refugee quota system not because they would not be able to

manage the flow, rather because they embrace a political tactics in the sense of taking

revenge against Germany that is responsible for this refugee mess in the EU. “Let

Germany have its refugees,” is their de facto call.60

56 Interview with Alessandri, op cit. 57 Interview with an AIES anonymous employee, op cit. 58 Ibid. 59 Interview with Dunay, op cit. 60 Interview with Wolters, op cit.

66

The overall revival of the Euroskeptic, national and nationalist forces on the

EU’s map signals the re-discovering of the theory of inter-governmentalism and

decadence of the theory of neo-functionalism as among the theories dedicated to

explaining the nature of the EU integration process. Inter-governmentalism

accentuates the role of the sovereign nation state with all its necessary attributes in the

process of integration. States would transfer powers to supranational institutions if it

was gainful and did not directly contradict with their national interests. Neo-

functionalism, on the contrary, downgrades the role of the nation state, while

underlining the role of supranational elites and institutions in the integration process

with a gradual spillover of integration from one sphere into another (Giniyatov 2015).

The current EU’s juncture in the context of the refugee crisis does not meet

the requirements of neo-functionalism by being an object of harsh criticism from

within on the part of the member states. Le Pen compares the EU with “a totalitarian

machine” that undemocratically imposes its directives and infringes on France’s

sovereignty (Oxford Union Society 2015), whereas Orbán opposes the development

of the EU’s common migration and asylum policy by sending a clear message to

Brussels that “whoever needs migrants can take them, but don’t force them on us, we

don’t need them” (Independent 2016a). Rebellion of the Central European states

against Brussels by rejecting EU’s refugee relocation plan as well as Brexit signify

that spillover effect has been put on hold, while supporting the inter-

governmentalism’s argument that in times of crisis national states should embrace

rational and pragmatic policies (Giniyatov 2015).

Given the overall complexity of this Thesis’s H2 and discrepancy in the

opinions regarding all four hypothesis’s components (heightening centrifugal

tendencies, populism upsurge, Brexit, and the East-West division), I conclude that the

67

hypothesis holds to be largely, but not fully, true, i.e. we fail to fully reject the null

hypothesis of no relationship. That is, in case of heightening centrifugal tendencies by

a slow erosion of the Schengen agreement, rise in radical right-wing populism, and

East-West division, the analysis of hypothesis has brought evidence that the refugee

crisis has been a factor, whereas with regards to Brexit, the refugee crisis has had a

semi-peripheral influence to it.

68

IV

CONCLUSIONS

The purpose of this Thesis was to scrutinize the political effects of the Syrian refugee

crisis on the institutional fabric of the EU. The objective was also to investigate and

then determine the implications of the refugee crisis vis-à-vis five areas of

application: (i) the Schengen agreement being under a threat of a permanent

suspension, thus heightening centrifugal forces within the EU; (ii) rise and

solidification of Euroskeptic, radical right-wing or populist parties, which shape the

migration and refugee debate in the Union; (iii) the Brexit campaign that has managed

to have the UK decide to withdraw from the EU under the pressure of anti-immigrant

and anti-refugee rhetoric (although the formal exit procedure will take several years);

(iv) the East-West division within the Union that was intensified by disagreements

among the EU members on the issue of dealing with migrants and refugees; and (v)

weakening of intra-EU commitments of unity and shared European values as

exemplified by a solidarity crisis among the EU member states.

Two hypotheses were proposed for testing, and as my inquiries demonstrated,

this research failed to entirely disprove the proposed hypotheses. According to the

chosen theoretical framework for this Thesis, the refugee crisis, accompanied by

economic crisis (exemplified by the Greek economic meltdown), Ukrainian crisis, and

Brexit, has slowed down further economic and would-be political progress in EU’s

integration by siphoning its internal cohesion and revealing the fragmented nature of

the European integration as well as allowing anti-EU leaders and Euroskeptic parties

to gain entry to the top of European politics.

69

By means of qualitative research via interviews and literature review, the first

hypothesis (H1, that of the lack of a joint political response by EU member states to

the Syrian refugee crisis) failed to be disproven, demonstrating that the refugee crisis

has laid bare internal tensions and core disagreements within institutional and nation

states’ framework, that is, among the EU member states on the one hand, and among

the member states and the EU institutions, on the other, as well as having put into the

question the validity and solidness of the common European values and sense of

collective solidarity.

The second hypothesis (H2, that of the broader ramifications of the Syrian

refugee crisis), on the contrary, only practically failed to be disproven to the full

extent given the asymmetrical impact of the refugee crisis on the areas of this Thesis’s

investigation as well as discrepancy in expert opinions in this regard. The most

affected area by the Syrian refugee crisis turns out to be the Schengen zone that

experiences restoration of national border controls by its members and restriction of

freedom of movement to take refugee flows under control. The refugee crisis has

exposed the vulnerability of Schengen’s external borders and limited level of co-

operation among member states in security and border management spheres. Both the

literature review and much of the interviewed experts concurred that the rise and

strengthening of Euroskepticism and radical right-wing populism is also stipulated by

the unfolding refugee crisis. As long as established political elites are incapable to

devise a durable response to the refugee challenge, the more ground the Euroskeptics

and right populists would gain.

The inability of the EU member states to reach a consensus on how to deal

with the refugee influx has separated the Union into two antagonistic camps. The

refugee relocation scheme designed by the European Commission on the basis of

70

shared quotas for member states as an urgent step forward in resolving the refugee

crisis has, instead, turned into an apple of discord with the Central European states

being the main opponents of the scheme. Meanwhile, the outcomes of the H2’s

analysis illustrate that East-West division is also complemented by an internal split

among the Central European EU members striving to find a compromise on the

refugee issue as a means of speaking with a single voice in front of their Western EU

colleagues.

With Brexit, the results renders ambiguous, since almost a half of the

interviewees called upon not to overestimate the impact of the refugee crisis on the

campaign of taking the UK out of the EU by arguing that Brexit has simply

constituted an old debate on sovereignty framed into the migration and refugee crisis

cover. However, to investigate all explicit and hidden reasons behind the Brexit

campaign would require a whole other Thesis to write. That said, given the extremely

close vote of Brexit, 51.9% in favour, 41.1% against (BBC 2016b), it can be argued,

counterfactually, that the Syrian refugee was the proverbial straw that broke the

camel’s back in Britain’s EU membership referendum.

I thus conclude that, overall, the refugee crisis has, undoubtedly, put the

European integration project to the test, one which it currently fails to fully pass.

Societal peace, prosperity and values have significantly weakened, if not vanished,

from the lexicon of the EU leaders being replaced by real or imaginary fear of

migrants, refugees, terrorism and Islamism. The crisis has unveiled systemic failures

within the EU edifice with its institutional and legislative arrangements having proven

to be flawed and insufficiently designed when dealing with hundreds of thousands

(and potentially millions) of newcomers from MENA countries. European patchy

migration and asylum policy has revealed its structural and internal limitations

71

exacerbated by the EU member states’ inability to come to an agreement on the right

means and right policy to handle the refugee crisis. Common co-operation started to

be perceived not as intrinsic feature of the integration, rather as its unattractive

necessity and burden.

The refugee crisis has weakened an internal fabric of the EU cohesion by

demonstrating that finding a common ground on the migrant and refugee issue has

become a mission impossible in the relations among the EU member states. Unity and

solidarity—once key principles of the European integration—have given way to

nationalism, unilateralism and a principle of everyone defending their own interests.

That, in turn, entails risks of free riding, deeper seated political divisions and more

fragmentation of the Union. Though the EU encounters the need to find a collective

response to the crisis it is facing, it finds it difficult to do so because of a lack of a

common understanding of the problem among its member states. In this light, the EU

has obtained features of a loose confederation that gives priority to economics, rather

than solidarity and shared values.

The refugee crisis has brought to the surface some skeletons that the EU

member states strived to hide very carefully over the years. The reluctance to avoid

any serious discussion on the issues of common concern out of fear of provoking

tensions and popular discontent at home is one of them. Distrust and suspicion in

mutual relations as well as fear of loss of national sovereignty further complicate the

picture. Prioritization of national agendas is complemented by the unwillingness to

compromise non-economic areas of integration. This sense of a profound unease

among the EU members, in turn, mirrors a strong lack of trust of their populations in

the Union’s capacity to elaborate adequate solutions to problems at hand. Such a

perception of Europe being hesitant and uncertain in its own actions negatively affects

72

efforts to boost more integration and to expand the Union.

Against that background, the main risk of the refugee crisis to usher in the EU

disintegration starts to be well-founded, especially when internal responses of the

European institutions have proven to be weak and tepid, and member states project

little political will to design and implement a durable strategy to cope with the refugee

influx. The crisis might trigger a change of the EU’s institutional structure (i.e.

abolishment or rather creation of extra bodies and agencies), its formal appearance

(i.e. a looser union) and re-examination of its foreign, border, migration and asylum

policies. It also could decrease the attractiveness of the Union and make it even less

effective in terms of delivering sustainable solutions. Rescuing the EU’s narrative

requires member states to put aside their frictions, demonstrate sentiments of

solidarity and act in concert in order to address both the symptoms and roots of the

refugee crisis.

73

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79

APPENDIX: LIST OF INTERVIEWS

1. Emiliano Alessandri, OSCE Employee, Vienna, September 2016.

2. Anonymous, Employee of the Austrian Institute for European and Security

Policy (AIES), Vienna, October 2016.

3. Frank Cibulka, Migration Expert and Professor at Zayed University, Bishkek,

October 2016.

4. Pál Dunay, Professor of NATO and European Security Issues, Bishkek, July

2016.

5. Wolfgang Eminger, Second Secretary, Embassy of the Federative Republic of

Germany at the Kyrgyz Republic, Bishkek, July 2016.

6. Rashid Gabdulhakov, Independent Researcher, Bishkek, August 2016.

7. Juergen Heissel, Member of the Austrian Permanent Mission to the OSCE,

Vienna, October 2016.

8. Stefan Lehne, Visiting Scholar at Carnegie Europe, Vienna, October 2016.

9. Alexander Wolters, Professor of Sociology, American University of Central

Asia, Bishkek, April 2016.