The far right across Europe used to dream of seeing their countries leave the European Union. In France, they called for a Frexit; in Germany, it was Dexit. But recently these calls have quietened. The reason is not that far-right parties have become enamoured of the EU, but rather they now understand that instead of quitting, they can reshape the EU into a collection of “strong” nation states that will each enact their own rightwing anti-migration agenda.
As Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally (RN) in France, recently remarked in explaining why his party no longer called for France to quit the EU: “You don’t leave the table when you are winning the game.”
That the far right is being allowed to “win the game” is abundantly clear in Germany, where the governing coalition has announced systematic border controls, which will come into force on 16 September. Tighter checks at all of Germany’s nine land borders are an attempt by the government to curb immigration by preventing people, especially asylum seekers who have already crossed other EU states, from entering Germany.
This opens the way for serious human rights violations and racial profiling. Germany’s Council for Migration warns that the plan risks violating EU law.
The border checks are due to be in place for an initial six months. They were announced amid a febrile debate about what the leader of the conservative opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) called a “national emergency” after a Syrian asylum seeker who, under EU asylum regulations, should have been returned from Germany to Bulgaria, was charged with a fatal killing in Solingen. Since the far-right, anti-migration Alternative für Deutschland’s (AfD’s) electoral success in Thuringia and Saxony on 1 September, the debate has reached boiling point.
The German government is on a dangerous path. The country holds a central position in the EU and is its largest economy, meaning that this plan, which goes against one of the central tenets of the EU, threatens to undermine the European project.
A cornerstone of that project was the ambition to make national borders disappear by creating the passport-free Schengen area, which now includes 25 of the 27 EU member states. It was one of the reasons why the EU received the Nobel peace prize in 2012 – although even then, thousands of migrants were dying at the EU’s external borders every year. At the time, a representative of the union declared: “Over the past 60 years, the European project has shown that it is possible for peoples and nations to come together across borders. That it is possible to overcome the differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’.”
No wonder the Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, has publicly criticised Germany’s unilateral plan as a systematic suspension of Schengen and a contravention of European law. Austria has also said it is not prepared to receive any migrants turned back from the border with Germany, and other countries are likely to concur.
The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, claimed on Wednesday that the government had already “achieved a great turnaround in reducing irregular migration”. But Scholz’s plan risks causing a chain reaction throughout Europe that could lead to the unravelling of the “post-national” idea itself. In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, leader of the far-right Freedom party, which is now part of the government, has already asked: “If Germany can do it, why can’t we?”, adding: “As far as I’m concerned, the sooner the better.”
Other parties on the far right are celebrating. By caving in to anti-migration sentiment, supposedly “centrist” political parties are doing the far right’s bidding and legitimising its vision of a Europe with hardening borders. It is no great surprise that Hungary’s authoritarian leader, Viktor Orbán, congratulated Scholz, tweeting: “@Bundeskanzler, welcome to the club! #StopMigration.”
German asylum statistics show that the number of asylum applications is actually decreasing this year. However, the three parties of the ruling coalition want to regain lost electoral support by joining with the far and centre right. Both the AfD and the CDU are aggressively pushing for repressive migration policies.
Police chiefs have said they may lack capacity to carry out the new border checks. But whether Germany can actually control its 3,700km of frontiers is beside the point. By seeking to pass the measures ahead of a third state election in Brandenburg on 22 September, the coalition is signalling to voters that it is prepared to act decisively to address what CDU leaders hyperbolically call a “loss of control” at Germany’s borders.
The German government’s belief that it can tackle migration and regain electoral support by ramping up border controls is misguided. The truth is, migration will continue in a world that fails to address the reasons why people flee their countries: wars and conflict, political persecution and oppression, the climate catastrophe and unsustainable forms of resource exploitation.
Besides stoking up racist resentment in society and undermining the rights of vulnerable groups, the German government risks putting the EU itself in jeopardy. The very idea of a political community that enshrines the right to free movement across borders is crumbling before our eyes. And it is not migrants who are to blame.
Dr Maurice Stierl is a migration and border researcher at the University of Osnabrück, Germany
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