Thursday, June 21, 2018

Chancellor Babyface among the Visograds

Austria's not-quite-32-year-old Chancellor Sebastian "Babyface" Kurz has been hard at work promoting anti-immigration events that generate free publicity and enflame nationalist hostilities without committing Austria to actually have to do much of anything to actually address the chronic refugee crisis that the EU has been facing at least since 2011.


Kurz had more experience in political office before he became Chancellor in December 2017 than, for instance, Donald Trump. But he seems to be an opportunist with no particular principles other than promoting his own political career.

I attended a live event last September during the campaign when Kurz (ÖVP) debated his now Vice Chancellor and coalition partner HC Strache (FPÖ) and the then Chancellor now opposition leader Christian Kern (SPÖ). It was obvious in that appearance that Strache was clearly more experienced and at ease with retail politics than either Kurz or Kern. I've wondered since then if Strache as the junior partner in the national coalition, even though his far-right FPÖ is smaller than the ÖVP.

Kurz was clearly showing his opportunist side during the campaign by demagoguing against foreigners, something the FPÖ has been doing for Babyface's entire life. It's not yet clear after half a year if Kurz is clearly in command of the political direction of his coalition government. It may be. But he's still enthusiastic about the foreigner-baiting. And the FPÖ seems to be getting what they want on that front for the time being.

Kurz raised a lot of diplomatic eyebrows very recently by calling for an "axis of the willing" with Italy and Germany (or at least the German state of Bavaria) against immigration.

Thursday he was in Hungary for a meeting the Visegrad Group of states, which includes Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, three of which share a border with Austria. Hungary's President Viktor Orban is one of the main European models for what he calls "illiberal democracy," authoritarian government in nominally democratic form. Xenophobic nationalism has been one of his political themes. (Hungary PM says Visegrad countries and Austria to promote EU border defence Yahoo!/Reuters 06/21/2018; Visegrad-Gruppe und Österreich pochen auf harte Flüchtlingspolitik Salzburger Nachrichten 21.06.2018)

Quelle: https://www.sn.at/politik/weltpolitik/visegrad-gruppe-und-oesterreich-pochen-auf-harte-fluechtlingspolitik-29473321 © Salzburger Nachrichten VerlagsgesmbH & Co KG 2018)

A look at a map of the Schengen Area in Europe (this one from Wikipedia; Schengen area in dark blue) gives an idea of not only the geographic context but the political element, much of which is a PR scam.


Chancellor Babyface, Orban, and the other Visegrad states are demanding the "securing" of the EU's external borders. The diplomatic device that has been in place for years is the Schengen Agreement, which actually predates the EU though it has been expanded since . In order to abolish routine border checks for travel within the EU, the states on the outer borders of the Schengen Area enforce the commonly-agreed external entry standards. Those are shown in dark blue on the above map, with Switzerland and Liechtenstein being non-EU members that are in conformity with the Schengen standards.

Three of the Visegrad countries have external Schengen borders: Hungary with Croatia, Serbia, Romania, and Ukraine; Slovakia with Ukraine; and, Poland with Ukraine, Belarus, Lituania, and Russia. Czechia has none.

Non-Visegrad Austria also has none. So when Austria and Czechia are fretting over the "outer borders" of the EU, they are talking about other countries' enforcement of the borders.

None of the Visegrad countries or Austria is currently dealing with anything that could reasonably be called a level of refugees that they can't handle. The European border and coast guard agency, Frontex, currently has figures on the January-April 2018 illegal border crossings into Europe:


This presumably doesn't include legal entrants, which include people applying for asylum that may not get it. But what this map of the significant immigration routes is that most of them involve people from the Middle East and North Africa. Those immigrants are not directly entering The Visegrad states or Austria. Italy and Greece are holding large numbers of refugees from Middle East and North Africa. And Greece especially has very legitimate complaints about inadequate solidarity on support and resettlement of immigrants from their fellow EU members.

But solidarity and support are not what the anti-immigrant policies of the Visegrad states and especially not from Austria and Czechia are about.

In Austria's case, Chancellor Babyface is trying to posture as the defender of Austria's borders by posturing over issues on which Austria has no direct control.

Starting in July, Chancellor Babyface will represent Austria, which holds the Presidency of the Council of the European Union. Which is not the same as the President of the European Council, who is currently Donald Tusk. The lack of clarity of roles in the EU is one of the various reasons for the "democratic deficit" in the EU.

But Kurz, who will be formally one of the key leaders of the EU in the second half of 2018, is actively undermining the EU with his demagogic anti-immigrant policies and posturing. To him it must look like cheap political gains. Because Austria itself doesn't have to directly implement these tougher external border policies he's promoting because Austria is not a Schengen border country.

Most importantly, Kurz and his Visegrad buddies are not promoting real solutions to the refugee problem. Politicians like Kurz and Strache aren't interested in solving the actual problems, only in exploiting them to promote authoritarian rightwing politics.

The broad outlines of a real European solution to the crisis are actually fairly obvious: stop supporting American wars in the Middle East and engage diplomatically to avoid wars in the Middle East and other external military interventions like those of Russia (and, yes, that will damage the profits of some European arms dealers and that's a good thing); a fair and comprehensive program for settling prepare adequate emergency services to handle unexpected surges in refugees like those in 2015; sufficient or more-than-sufficient support for the refugee camps in Greece, Italy, and Turkey.

There's a lot of empty talk right now about setting up asylum center in Libya and other places to process asylum claims there. This is largely a joke. First of all, if you're trying to flee a country persecuting, killing, raping, or starving you, is anyone in their right mind going to go to the government doing that apply for asylum elsewhere? Asylum applications involved preparing legal cases. Are countries like Libya going to provide those? That's really a bad joke.

Chancellor Babyface has a great chance the second half of 2018 to use his diplomatic visibility in the EU to promote some real solutions and not just PR stunts. So far, there is no indication that he intends to do so.

And for Kurz and Strache to promote the fascist anti-immigrant and anti-Roma (Gypsy) politics of the new Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini is about as destructive it can be for any serious effort to address the real (not imaginary) refugee problems of the EU.

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