Refugees
EU: Schengen or barbed wire?
The barbed-wire politics of the four Visegrad States against refugees creating unrest in the EU Schengen area. But what is the Position represented in Bulgaria, Croatia and Romania, the Non-Schengen-members in the Balkans?
Poland, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and Hungary are currently the most violent critics of the refugee policy of the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The four Visegrad countries refuse to continue a Europe-wide redistribution of the refugees according to quotas. They threaten now with a total foreclosure by more barbed wire fences on their borders.
Help should also be a member of the EU, Bulgaria, and Macedonia. Both have agreed, at their respective borders to Greece fences pull up, should the government in Athens, the refugee crisis is not in get a grip.
Measures with probably far-reaching consequences: Not only Greece would be effectively out of the Schengen area is “locked out“, but the Schengen agreement in total would be waste, which has been the free movement of persons and goods in the EU.
Refugees on the Hungarian-Serbian border (August 2015): threat-with total foreclosure
For the three most recent Central-Eastern European EU members Croatia, Bulgaria and Romania, this would technically still not a disaster – you belong anyway still not to the Schengen area, so in the States, between which there are no border controls anymore. Although meet Bulgaria and Romania for 2011 the technical conditions for accession. Both States were due to lack of reforms in the judiciary and the temporarily sluggish fight against corruption not yet in the “Schengen Club”.
Ready for the Grenzschließung
EU newcomer Croatia last summer, the inclusion in the Schengen area, as requested. In Brussels it is said that the Land at the earliest in 2017 can count on. In Croatia itself, the subject is not particularly intensively discussed. A much greater role of the barbed-wire politics of the neighboring States: “If Slovenia and Austria to close their borders, we will do that as well“, announced in January to Tomislav Karamarko, the President of the ruling conservative HDZ party. Karamarko said, you will have the same methods and means need to apply as well as the neighbouring States. However, he stressed, that “with our partners in the EU,” spoke will. Croatia must not be allowed to “Appendix of Europe”.
HDZ President Karamarko: “methods of neighbouring countries”
In Bulgaria and Romania plays the discussion about Schengen a much larger role. Many people in these countries will feel because of the long Anwärterstatus as an EU second-class citizens. Yet it is precisely this Status should ensure that Romania, of all to great impact of the refugee crisis has so far been spared, as the result of a recent study of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. The country with asylum seekers unpopular, because a Romanian residence permit not in the rule for the Schengen countries is valid.
The attractiveness of Bulgaria on asylum seekers is similarly low, but, unlike Romania, Bulgaria is one of the transit countries on the so-called “Balkan route“. A fence on the border with Turkey is already since 2014, now according to the will of the Visegrad States, a second at the border to Greece to follow. Bulgaria should ensure financial and human support
Schengen, of portion
Through their respective positioning in the refugee hope for Bulgaria and Romania with a rapid “Kontenregelung“ with Brussels: Both countries since their accession in 2007 under a close Monitoring in the field of justice and fight against corruption.
Shortly before the EU summit on Thursday promised EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker to the Romanian Prime Minister Dacian Ciolos, the control mechanism will be still during the mandate of his Commission revoked, i.e. until no later than 2019. Bulgaria and Romania hope that this is faster, and see the issue quite as negotiable in the current Flüchtlingsdebatte.
Anyway is a partial solution for Bulgaria and Romania in the conversation: At airports and seaports could be border controls with the Rest of the EU as the first fall. The Festlandsgrenzen would then in a second step to follow. The behavior of the two States in the refugee could also be a ruling influence.
With the governments in Sofia and Bucharest have different strategies: Bulgaria is looking for obvious support in the Visegrad countries and contributes to their Abschottungsbestrebungen uncritically. Romania rejects this barbed-wire politics, but also wants Merkel’s Flüchtlingsquotenregelung not unconditionally accept.
Against a “politics of the new fences”
The German Chancellor Merkel at the EU summit more with the carrot than with a whip support for a European solution. In Brussels were again and again voices become loud, which recalled that many of the Eastern European States to the largest Nettoempfängern of EU funds count. Just these countries would now but refuse refugees.
The threat, the countries to impose sanctions, it would surely be the wrong way, so the assessment of the SPD-deputies, nonetheless, Dietmar Nietan, member of the European and the foreign Affairs Committee in the Bundestag.
“If we have a solidarity-based solution to the refugee issue, then can we not with the Fears that threaten,“ said Nietan of the DW. Before the start of the EU summit on Thursday, he advocated a common European solution to the refugee issue. “New fences to build, as it is currently in several European countries, happens, is not the right way“, so Nietan. Now is a strong, self-contained European Union asked in a EU without egoism.