Quelle: openDemocracy
Hungary may have been first to literally wall off some of its frontiers, but its example has since been copied, by the French and the British.
Many observers see in the politics of the European member states a profound divide between the ‘old Europe’ and the so-called Visegrad group of Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In their view, Viktor Orbàn’s xenophobic campaign against the ‘enforced relocation of non-Hungarians in Hungary’ supported by 98% of voters highlights this division, notwithstanding the small turnout (40% of registered voters) in the vote last Sunday.
The reluctance of Visegrad countries to receive refugees is supposedly out of step with the EU ‘values’. Yet, despite their electioneering speeches and populist anathemas, the leaders of these states are inspired by the same dominant European principles of border control: denial of all freedom of movement for those seeking asylum, and the aim of keeping exiles at an ever-greater distance from the Schengen area, preferably in detention. Weiterlesen »