The weirdness of immigration controversies in European politics

The immigration issue continues to be exploited by far-right radical and anti-EU groups in Europe. The situations in Germany and Austria are the ones with which I'm most familiar.

What I continue to find astonishing is how divorced from pracitcal and realistic solutions the public debate often is.

The current solution to the mass immigration problem originating from the Middle East and North Africa was established by Angela Merkel in early 2016 in negotiations with Turkey's authoritarian President Tayyip Erdoğan. The deal in simple terms was that Turkey would hold the refugees coming across the Mediterranean in exchange for the EU paying them to do so.

The EU outsourced its most difficult border control problem to Turkey, which currently holds three million or so refugees in conditions that are very likely not the best. A smaller number are also held in Italy and Greece.

In politics, a "solution" that holds for two and a half years is easy to count as a success. But this was always a delicately balanced arrangement that could fall apart at any moment if, for instance, Erdoğan's government decides it serves them better to start sending massive numbers or refugees north than to keep holding up their end of the deal. Italy's new government, in which the far-right Lega party led by Interior Minister Matteo Salvini controls immigration policy, is already posturing against EU agreements and international law to show how much his party hates foreigners.

It's a standard Angela Merkel extend-and-pretend solution.

And it can be thrown out of kilter by a Syrian military push into the Idlib province. Michael Peel reports (EU steps up planning for refugee exodus if Assad attacks Idlib Financial Times 09/14/2018):

The situation in and around Idlib, which borders Turkey, has added urgency because several million people are estimated to be gathered there.

The UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs said this week that 30,000 people had been displaced from their homes by air and ground attacks by the Syrian regime and its allies on the opposition enclave, while a full assault could drive out 800,000.

Jean-Claude Juncker, European Commission president, this week warned that the “impending humanitarian disaster” in Idlib must be a “deep and direct concern to us all”.

So it's not as though the EU governments and leaders don't know that they are facing a longterm, ongoing immigration crisis. But, as Peel also reports, the immediate goal is to clear current immigration camps in Greece by accelerating settlement of their current occupants to make way for new refugees.

But from his report, it appears that even that preparation is something ongoing for other reasons, "The proposal is primarily aimed at dealing with what 19 non-governmental groups on Thursday branded 'shameful' conditions at the island migrant centres." Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is meeting next week with the EU "migration minister" to discuss ways to free up 3,000 spots in the current camps.

Yes, with the imminent prospect of up to 800,000 refugees coming out of Syria to Turkey in the next few weeks, Greece and the EU are looking to free up 3,000 spots in current camps. The current camps that NGOs are criticizing, with good reason, for already bad conditions.

If this were a problem that appeared suddenly due to, say, an asteroid striking the Middle East, the EU's lack of preparedness might be more understandable. But the asteroid was the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the subsequent destablization of Iraq and Syria, along with the NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 which left Libya a failed state. That meant that Libya, which had previously absorbed large numbers of African refugees as workers, was no longer able and willing to do so. By virutally all Western news accounts, conditions in the current camps in Libya are genuinely horrific.

Since 2011 - the year of the NATO intervention in Libya - there has been a visible crisis of large numbers of refugees making their way on the very dangerous trip across the Mediterranean toward Europe. That was seven years ago. In 2018, the EU is struggling to free up 3,000 places in Greek refugee camps in face of the impending exodus of up to 800,000 refugees from Idlib.

That's what an extend-and-pretend solution looks like.

There is actually a practical, resonable, and humane way for the EU to handle this problem. Its basic elements are well known and have been discussed for years:

• Establish individual country quotas for the reception of non-doucmented immigration flow. In the case of an Idlib situation, that could mean parceling out hundreds of thousands of refugees in a few months time. In less acute years, like most of 2016, 2017, and 2018 to date, the numbers would be radically lower.
• Set up pro-active training programs and recruitment of immigrants for jobs which are not being filled by already-legal EU residents. In Germany and Austria, home assistance for the elderly is a job of which there is and will continue to be a growing demand. They are currently being filled mostly by immigrants, many of them from eastern EU countries. And for the same reason that agriculture in the US is completely dependent on immigrant labor, including massive numbers of undocumented workers: they can't get native workers to do it at any feasbile wage level.
• Provide expanded development assistance to African countries in particular to provide local opportunities for people there.

Another measure that is much discussed is establishing asylum centers in Libya or other places outside of the EU borders where refugees can apply for asylum in Europe. This is known as the "Australian" solution.

But we don't need to know much about what Australia is doing to see that the latter proposal is only barely more than pure fantasy. And that's probably putting it too generously. No African country has agreed to such a scheme, and none are likely to do so. The proposal as it is being discussed runs into all sorts of problems in international and EU law. The only way the EU could insure that such camps would provide minimally humane and secure conditions in countiries like Libya would be to run the camps themselves. The PR problems of the EU setting up camps in Africa in which refugees could be, uh, concentrated, is actually the least serious problem involved.

The rightwing nationalist parties in EU countries are flatly opposed to a new system of refugee settlement and assimilation ("integration" in the official jargon in Germany and Austria). The weakened center-left parties have also been timid at best in validating this approach.

In Austria and Germany and other EU countries, the native birth rate is below the replacement rate, which means that population is expected to decline in coming decades. In order to have growing economies in the sense we currently understand economic growth, they will need significant numbers of immigrants. Several former Eastern Bloc countries are already suffering serious negative economic impacts because so many younger workers have already immigration to other EU countries.

Expanded developmental aid to African countries like Niger is certainly a worthy goal. Also a difficult one to pull off. And that talking point does nothing to address what will happen if another 800,000 refugees come into Turkey in the next few months. Politicians advocating this typically don't bother to reference the fact that the biggest development aid some African countries are currently getting comes from their citizens working in Europe who send money back to their families. And since those amounts are going to individual famililies, much of it presumably gets spent on consumption which boosts their economies. And is also, I assume, less vulnerable to massive diversion of funds than some traditional aid projects might be. In other words, African workers in Europe are a major foreign aid provider.

Much of the actual political rhetoric around immigration, though, is frivolous. The Austrian government has been taking various measure to make life for asylum-seekers in Austria more difficult, which does have the real effect of hurting real people. The rest is largely posturing. In one sense, Austria is a "free-rider" on border issues, because it doesn't have a Mediterranean coast. The current Chancellor Sebastian "Wunderwuzzi" Kurz likes to talk about boosting the presence of the border patrol Frontex, which the EU is currently doing. But if a situation like 2015 occurs again, which could happen at almost any time, and refugees are sent north to Hungary and Austria, what is Chancellor Wunmderwuzzi actually going to do? Gun them down at the border? And, if not, he's going to need a whole lot more than empty rhetoric about asylum centers in North Africa.

He rose to be Chancellor at age 31 because he skillfully exploited and fed xenophobic fears and, as Foreign Minister in 2015-16, did a lot of posturing against Germany and Angela Merkel which in the context, had no real downside for him politically. But if the current -house-them-all-in-Turkey solution doesn't work, he's like to find that chest-beating is a limited practical use in a new acute phase of the immigrantion crisis.

Meanwhile, Putin's government in Russia currently sees an advantage in weakening the US and a very useful instrument to promote it in the immigration issue. Viktor Orbán's government in Hungary is currently the main European model for the anti-EU parties from Austria to Czechia, Solovakia, Poland, Sweden, Germany, Italy, and France. Some of those parties like the FPÖ in Austria have formal friendship/cooperation agreements with Putin's United Russia party, an arrangement that seems to be a rightwing reflection of the arrangements the Soviet Communist Party had with affiliated Communist parties in Europe. Not surprisingly, the Putin-allied parties are agitating over immigration issue, which they polemically call a "migration" crisis, in ways that align with Putin's foreign policy goals.

"Illiberal democracy" in Hungary

Hungary is currently run by the Fidesz Party of President Viktor Orbán and is the most prominent practioner in the EU of what he calls "illiberal democracy," inspired in significant part by the oligarchical government of Vladimir Putin in Russia. Berhard Knoll and Constanze Jeitler have a very helpful analysis of developments in Hungary in the Vienna weekly Falter (29:2018 17.07.2018), Best of Böse: die Ungarn-Edition.

The whole notion of "illiberal democracy" is what can also be called "plebiscitary democracy," in which voting involves approving or disapproving decisions already taken by the government, like in a plebiscite. But doing so with institutions that effectively prevent free, competitive democractic choice by an informed electorate and allow the governing party to rule without the kinds of formal limitations on abuses like the separation of powers between legislative, executive, and judicial branches that are part of the EU standards of democratic governance.

Hungary (dark green) in Europe

Under the rules set up by Orbán, his Fidesz Party won an overwhelming parliamentary majority in this past April's election, 133-68, large enough to make consitutional changes without any opposition votes, without having to win nearly so large a majority in the popular vote. The New York Times reported on the results of the election (Marc Santora and Helene Bienvenu, Hungary Election Was Free but Not Entirely Fair, Observers Say 04/09/2018):

On the national voting list, Fidesz secured more than 49 percent of the vote, with some 2.6 million voting for the party and its Christian Democratic allies. That was roughly the same as the seven largest opposition parties combined.

Fidesz also won convincingly in local elections, securing a two-thirds majority in Parliament, which will give the party a free hand to pursue still deeper legal and constitutional changes that have already given it firm control over courts and other state institutions.

The April election was formally observed by the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). Knoll and Jeitler summarize the OSCE's findings as follows:

Die Überschneidung von Ressourcen des Staates und der Regierungspartei machte es anderen Kandidaten geradezu unmöglich, einen Wahlkampf auf Augenhöhe zu führen. Den Wählern standen viele politische Optionen offen, der Raum für echte politische Debatten war aber beschnitten. Einschüchterungen und fremdenfeindliche Äußerungen, die Voreingenommenheit der Medien und die undurchsichtige Finanzierung des Wahlkampfs behinderten Wähler, eine sachkundige Entscheidung zu fällen, hieß es im Abschlussbericht.

{The overlap of resources of the state and the ruling party made it nearly impossible for other candidates to conduct an election campaign on a equal basis. The voters had many options available to the them, but the space for real political debates was circumcised. Intimidations and xenophoblc declarations, the prejudice of the media, and the untransparent financing of the election campaign hindered voters from making an informed decision, said the final report.}

As they report, there are still independent media in Hungary, but the UN Human Rights Council has warned that the current "Hungarian media laws can no longer fully guarantee that press coverage can occur in an uncensored and unhindered fashion." (my translation)

Knoll and Jeitler describe how government-friendly oligarchs also take part in the subordination of much of the press to the government position:

Die Politik übernahm die Medienlandschaft im Laufschritt. Nicht nur der öffentliche Rundfunk wurde zum Propagandasender der Regierungspartei. Private Medien fürchten um ihre Werbeeinnahmen und verhalten sich deswegen still, oder aber sie werden von regierungsnahen Oligarchen aufgekauft, wie zum Beispiel der Sender TV2. Nachdem der ungarischamerikanische Hollywood-Produzent und Orbán-Intimus Andy Vajna den Sender erworben hatte, wurde er schnell zu einem regierungstreuen Kampfhund, der gerne von der Leine gelassen wird, um Oppositionelle und Redakteure zu attackieren.

{Polical power overtook the media landscape in double-time. Not only did public broadcasting become the propaganda arm of the ruling party. Private media fear for their advertising income and stay quiet because of that, or either they are bought up by government-aligned oligarchs, as for example the station TV2. After the Hungarian-American Hollywood producer and Orbán intimate Andy Vajna had bought the station, it quickly became a loyal government attack dog that likes to be let off the lease to attack opposition figures and editors.}

Knoll and Jeitler highlight Orbán's aggressive campaign against non-governmental organizations (NGOs) promoting mainstream democratic practices and defending human rights. Some of it is in the form of intimidation by the youth wing of Fidesz. But they also describe a new law taking effect at the end of July that imposes a 25% tax on organizations that engage in "propaganda activities," which is aimed in particular at groups supporting immigrants and opposing the government's xenophobic propaganda. George Soros' Open Society Foundation is one of the NGOs targeted.

That is a case in which two favorite Fidesz propaganda themes, xenophobia and anti-Semitism, intersect. Orbán and his cronies are perfectly happy to have one of their Hungarian-American oligarch buddies buy an annoying news outlet on their behalf. But they are very, very unhappy about the alleged dealings of the most famous Hungarian-American, George Soros.

Soros, of course, has been a favorite bogeyman for Jew-haters on both sides of the Atlantic for, well, it seems like forever. George Soros is a real person who is active in politics both in the US and Europe. And, of course, the real-world George Soros is fair game for praise and criticism, just like anyone else active in political affairs.

But the "George Soros" of the anti-Semites is just a symbol for the imaginary Worldwide Jewish Elders of Zion Conspiracy against good Christian white folks. And the Hungarian government and the ruling Fidesz Party promote that version with shameless demogoguery. As Knoll and Jeitler report, during the election they promoted the hate-image of George Soros "as the puppeteer of Muslim mass migration" and declared him an "enemy of the state." Jews as puppet-masters was a stock image of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda.

Im Wahlkampf hatte die Regierung von Steuergeldern finanzierte Plakate affichiert, die einen geifernd grinsenden George Soros zeigten: „Lassen wir nicht zu, dass Soros als Letzter lacht.“ Im Staatsfernsehen und Rundfunk liefen Spots mit antisemitischen Untertönen. Die Fidesz-Jugend bastelte ein Plakat, das Soros als Puppenspieler zeigte, der ungarische Oppositionspolitiker wie Marionetten tanzen lässt.

{During the election, the government placed placards financed with public funds that showed a greedily grinning George Soros [and capitioned], "Let's don't let Soros have the last laugh". In public TV and radio, spots ran with anti-Semitic undertones. The Fidesz Youth pasted up a placard that showed Soros as a puppetmaster who had Hungarian opposition politicians dancing like marionettes.}

The centerpiece of Fidesz propaganda is the supposed menance of hordes of refugees coming into Hungary. This scare is still riding on the back of the alarm generated by the surge of refugees to Europe from the Middle East and North Africa in 2015, most of whom wound up someplace other than Hungary.

The refugee/immigraiton issue - which European xenophobes prefer to call "migration" because in the current political lingo that sounds like "freeloaders" - has been particularly potent in Hungary. That despite the fact that Hungary has a notably lower percentage of immigrants as part of its population than other European countries like Austria. That may sound superficially paradoxical. But it's a general pattern. In Germany, Austria, the United States, the strongest anti-immigrant sentiment if found in areas with relatively few immigrants. People with actual, real-life contacts with immigrants are distinctly less receptive to xenophobic political demagoguery.

But, in a manner similar to the practices implemented by Donald Trump and Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III in the US, Orbán government uses gratuitous cruelty to immigrants as a way of acclimatizing people to escalating levels of brutuality and human rights violations. Although, to be fair to Hungarian authoritarians, I have not yet seen reports of Hungary systematically kidnapping immigrant children from their parents as ICE does in the US as state terror against immigrants. The reality in Hungary is nevertheless more than ugly enough. Knoll and Jeitler report on immigrant detention camps inside Hungary near the Serbian border:

Die zwei Transitzonen Röszke und Tompa suchen ihresgleichen in Europa. Hochsicherheitskomplexe gleich hinter dem Zaun, den Ungarn 2015 an der Grenze zu Serbien aufgezogen hat. Stacheldraht, Stahldrehtüren, Container und Überwachungskameras. Das Muster für die Pläne von Herbert Kickl und Horst Seehofer? Die ungarischen Behörden haben im Vorjahr knapp 4000 Menschen gestattet, Asylanträge zu stellen. Heute lassen die ungarischen Behörden durchschnittlich pro Arbeitstag zwei Asylwerber in die Transitzonen. Alle anderen, die im Land aufgegriffen werden und nicht eine der beiden Zonen passiert haben, werden, ohne einen Asylantrag stellen zu können, sofort nach Serbien zurückgeschoben.

In den ersten vier Monaten dieses Jahres wurde 267 Menschen, vornehmlich Afghanen, Schutz zugesprochen; 326 Anträge wurden abgelehnt. Das Verfahren innerhalb der Transitzonen dauert zwischen drei und sechs Monate – und das nach durchschnittlich achtmonatigem Warten in offenen Asylzentren in Nordserbien. Medizinische oder psychosoziale Betreuung gibt es genauso wenig wie effektiven Schutz minderjähriger Flüchtlinge vor Misshandlungen und sexueller Ausbeutung. Als Journalist kann man die Transitzonen zwar von außerhalb filmen, sie aber nicht besichtigen. Was in Röszke geschieht, bleibt in Röszke.

Der Europäische Menschenrechtsgerichtshof stellte unter anderem fest, dass zwei Bangladescher, die mit attestierter posttraumatischer Störung vor ihrer Zurückschiebung nach Serbien 2015 drei Wochen in der Transitzone angehalten wurden, ihrer Freiheit unrechtmäßig beraubt wurden und keinen Zugang zu wirksamen Rechtsbehelfen erhielten (die ungarische Regierung hat gegen das erstinstanzliche Urteil Berufung eingelegt). Röszke steht heute für eine weitverbreitete und systematische Rechtsverletzung.

{The two transit zones Röszke und Tompa are without comparison in Europe. High security compounds right behind the fence Hungary erected in 2015 on the border to Serbia. Barbed wire, steel revolving doors, containers, and surveillance cameras. The model for the plans of [Austrian Interior Minister] Herbert Kickl and [German Interior Minister] Horst Seehofer? Hungarian officials have approved barely 4,000 people to make application for asylum last year. Today, Hungarian officials allow on the average two asylum-seekers per day into the transit zones. All others who are captured in the country and haven't passed through either of the two zones are immediately sent back to Serbia without being able to apply for asylum.

In the first four months of this year, 267 people were granted [asylum] protection, primarily Afghans; 326 applicataions were rejected. The processes inside the transit zones last between three and six months - and that after an average eight months waiting in public asylum centers in Northern Seriba. Medical or psychosocial support services as so little present as effective protection of underage refugees from abuse and sexual exploitation. Journalists can only film the transit zones from outside, but are not allowed to visit them. What happens in Röszke stays in Röszke.

The European Court of Human Rights has confirmed that, among others, two Bangladeshis with attested post-traumatic disorders were held for three weeks in the transit zone before being sent back to Serbia in 2015, unjustly deprived of their freedom, and were provided no access to effective legal assistance. (The Hungarian government has appealed the initial ruling.) Röszke today represents a widespread and systematic violation of human rights.} [my emphasis]

To get a sense of proportion, Hungary's population is around 9.8 million and projected to shrink. Admitting 265 asylum-seekers is anything but a flood of newcomers and in no meaningful way can that be called a serious problem. Also, as long as Hungary wants to have a growing GDP, they need immigrants.

What's striking about so much of the anti-immigrant rhetoric in EU politics right now is that the problems are wildly exaggerated and lied about by xenophobic politicians. And the "solutions," when they go beyond rhetorical hot air, tend to be little more than performative brutality against immigrants. And stunningly irrelevant to the very real longterm immigration issues facing Europe, issues which will go through recurrent acute phases, especially as wars in the Middle East and North Africa break out or intensify.

This is what the death of democracy looks like. The Hungarian version of it, anyway.

The Trump-Putin Helsinki summit and nationalism in Europe

The Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki scheduled for July 16 is providing a focal point for political and foreign policy analysts to understand the current state of US-Russia and EU/NATO-Russia relations.

Several parties in power in European governments see Putin and his party as some kind of model for their countries. Viktor Orbán's government in Hungary is currently the leader in EU in moving to what Orbán calls "illiberal democracy," i.e., an autoritarian government validated through elections, on something like CKarl Schmitt's notion of validation through plebiscite.

In the German literature, for example the use of plebiscites was supported by Carl Schmitt, an apologist for the NSDAP-regime, who proposed that a dictator, as a “single trusted representative”, could use plebiscites to “decide in the name of the…people”[v], and it was denounced by democratically inclined writers like Robert Michels, who dismissed the plebiscite as it would allow “a Führer to lead the people astray through unclear questions, which he himself would be solely entitled to interpret afterwards”[vi]. (Encyclopedia Princetoniensis; accessed 07/06/2018)

No, even Hungary isn't that far gone yet. But, yes, Carl Schmitt is in fashion again, it appears. Schmitt would probably approve of Putin's manner of maintaining what is in fact a dictatorship while leaving the empty forms of democracy in place.

But it's also worth noting at this point that the Manichean notion that the US so often uses of democracy (Our Side) vs. dictatorship (The Bad People) is very often more slogan and propaganda than real understanding. Elections in Hungary, for instance, still do happen. And the EU rules do require free elections, which so far has put limits on how far toward authoritarian government EU member states can go. Though the Merkelized EU has far more diligent about enforcing Herbert Hoover-Heinrich Brüning economic policies than it has been about moving against "democractic deficits" in member states' governance. Not least because the EU has its own very real democratic deficits.

The point is that there is a continuum between democracy and dictatorship. And even dictatorships have to secure the practical support of some significant portions of their populations. In the case of "Putinist" parties and groups in Europe, the danger from such groups is not that they will suddenly stage a Putsch. Even Putin didn't come to power that way. The more immediate practical reality is that they are pushing for restrictions on democratic paticipation and seeking to further weaken or undermine the EU and NATO.

In Italy, Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte heads a still-new coalition government of the left-populist Five Star Movement and the right-populist Lega. Wolfgang Münchau's Eurointelligence conveys the concerns of Alberto Nardelli, Europe editor for Buzzfeed, about the Lega and the Interior Minister of that party, Matteo Salvini (What to make of Salvini's relations with Russia? 07/05/2018))

The key issue is the partnership agreement between the Lega and United Russia, Putin's Party. It contains a clause on information-sharing relevant to bilateral and multilateral affairs. The question is whether there is a deeper level of communication happening between the two parties, or whether they are simply united in their distaste for the EU and their admiration for Donald Trump. The diplomats said that European governments were playing close attention to Italy's behaviour especially during international meetings. Nardelli notes that Giuseppe Conte did not make good on previous threats by Italy to refuse a renewal of the Russian sanctions. But Conte took time with the decision, and made the point in the discussions that the sanctions should not hit Russian civil society. The officials Nardelli spoke to expressed concern that Conte may not be his own man, but may be under the direct control of Salvini and [Deputy Prime Minister and Five Star leader] Luigi Di Maio. [my emphasis]

Austria's far-right Freedom Party (FPÖ), currently the junior partner in Chancellor Sebastian "Babyface" Kurz' government, also concluded such a partnership agreement with United Russia in 2016 (Austrian far right signs deal with Putin's party, touts Trump ties Reuters 12/19/2016):

Party leader Heinz-Christian Strache and the FPO’s recently defeated presidential candidate Norbert Hofer attended the signing ceremony in Moscow, as did officials of Putin’s United Russia party including Pyotr Tolstoy, a deputy chairman of the lower house of parliament.

The FPO has long taken a pro-Russia stance, calling for an end to European Union sanctions against Moscow imposed over the annexation of Crimea and the conflict in eastern Ukraine. It has also denied allegations that it receives funding from Moscow.

Strache is now the Vice Chancellor and Foreign Minister for Austria.

Here the questions of pragmatic foreign policy, political ideology, and subversion get mixed together in ways than can be confusing. These partnership agreements with United Russia have at least an analogous relationship to the role of the Soviet Communist Party to other Communist Parties. But historical analogies are often as misleading as they are clarifying. The USSR saw itself as the legitimate leader of the world Communist movement, with the idea that the Soviet leadership provided worldwide guidance for how Communist Parties could come to power in other countries. Not surprisingly, non-Communist governments didn't view that as an entirely friendly arrangement.

But also not surprisingly, the reality was much more complicated. As Communist Parties did come to power in other countries, they had disagreements with the Soviet leadership. Yugoslavia broke with the Soviet leadership in 1948. The split between the USSR and China would become far more significant. Having formal partnerships with parties in other countries did not guarantee the Soviet Union even consistent pro-Soviet foreign policies on their part.

Politics is politics, and countries are countries. So of course countries try to influence other parties and other international actors in their favor. Anyone who is of a mind to do so can paint those influences as subversive or espionage will find some audience for those claims. Although for most people in most circumstances, the difference in admiring a foreign party or leader and committing illegal acts of espionage or treason is a clear one.

All of which is to say that we can view Russian governmental interference in elections in violation of national laws as a legal and factual matter. And the appeal to some constituencies of the Putinist forms of government and doctrine as a political and ideological matter. And the question of a country's relations to Russia as a practical and diplomatic concern.

So, whether a "Putinist" party's position on relations with Russia is good or bad depends very heavily on how one views what national and international interests and goals should be protected. Austria, for instance, gained some definite national advantages from its role as a neutral country between East and West. It would be very much to Austria's benefit as a country if its government was able to contruct a similar arrangement that would enable it to play a genuine role of reconcilation on the lines of its Cold War practice.

But Austria's best chance to do that is to strengthen the EU. And they haven't been good at that for quite a while. Strache's FPÖ has a strong anti-EU bent. In that way, the FPÖ's nationalism and hostility to the EU are in line with Putin's goals of dividing and weakening the EU and NATO. (Austria itself is not a NATO member.) The FPÖ has been banging the drums of xenophobia and Islamophobia for years, something also in line with Russia's own nationalistic policies. But that is a sign of parallel ideological development and not manipulation by Russian "special measures," however much inspiration the FPÖ may draws from Russian-style nationalism. But a policy course that actively undermines the EU and tends toward the Union's dissolution would certainly damage Austria's real interests.

The other factor currently at work is the erratic American President, who has displayed considerable hostility to both NATO and the EU. It's one thing for Austria to act as some kind of diplomatic mediator among the US, Russia, and the EU. But joining the US and Russia in wrecking the EU is a whole different matter. That's not a mediating strategy. It's sucker diplomacy.

Sadly, Chancellor Babyface seems so focused on short-term nationalist demagoguery ("Close the borders!") that he risks squandering the chance to reposition Austria as a more significant European player. Especially since he's been recklessly intervening in internal German politics and is already drawing Angela Merkel's anger and retaliation because of it.

Stephen Walt observes (The EU and NATO and Trump — Oh My! Foreign Policy 07/02/2018):

It is no secret that U.S. President Donald Trump has an instinctive animus against the European Union and NATO. He supported the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, reportedly advised French President Emmanuel Macron that his country should leave the union too, and last week falsely claimed that the EU was created “to take advantage of the United States.” (This last statement raises an obvious question: Does Trump know any history at all? The answer appears to be no.) He has long complained that NATO’s European members aren’t paying enough for defense and has offered only tepid support for the mutual defense clause that is at the heart of the NATO treaty.

So, it’s not surprising that both Europeans and Americans are now looking ahead to the NATO summit in July with a certain foreboding. Coming on the heels of Trump’s petulant tantrums during and after the G-7 summit in June, and taking place just before he is scheduled to meet one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin, the summit could turn out to be the diplomatic equivalent of a 29-car pileup.

Correction 07/15/2018: The Foreign Minister of Austria in the Kurz government from 12/18/2017 to now has been Karein Kneissl; Heinz-Christian Strache has not been Foreign Minister. Strache is Vice Chancellor and Minister of the Civil Service and Sport.

Deportees in Mexico, refugees in Hungary

AlJazeera reports on Mexicans deported from the United States, Back to reality: Waves of US-deported Mexicans struggle to survive 03/19/2017:





Aljazeera's Inside Story also reports on the ugly way in which Hungary is dealing with the refugee crisis in Europe, highlighting how badly the EU as a whole is handling this situation, Why Hungary's crackdown on refugees is being criticised 03/19/2017:

European Trumpism on immigration and refugees

The Hungarian government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán "will introduce measures within weeks to hold immigrants in detention “shelters” indefinitely in order to stop them traveling freely within Europe, his spokesman said on Monday," reports Politico EU (Tom McTague, Hungary hardens immigration line 02/07/2017).

Orbán's approach to government is often called "illiberal democracy." His politics fit broadly into the Trumputist umbrella. And according to McTague's report, Trump is providing validation and encouragement for Orbán's approach, at least by example:

Under Orbán’s proposal, those entering Hungary illegally — even if they are fleeing war-torn countries in the Middle East and Africa — will be kept in government camps, banned from moving freely within Hungary, until their status has been resolved, which could take “months.” ...

Budapest has clashed with Brussels before on the issue, most notably last year when it rejected an EU refugee resettlement plan and in 2015 when Hungarian police fired tear gas and water cannons against migrants on its border. But Orbán’s government has been emboldened by the election of U.S. President Donald Trump. In a speech last month, Orbán welcomed Trump’s election, saying it heralds a new age where countries are free to put their interests first. “The era of multilateralism is at an end, and the era of bilateral relations is upon us,” he said. ...

The election of Trump has also given Hungary’s government fresh confidence to pursue its agenda. “The change in the perception of the United States has helped,” [Orbán spokesman Zoltan] Kovacs said.

With Trump expressing hostility toward the EU as such, the refugee crisis becomes even more of a problem for the EU and its main leader, Angela Merkel.

And this again brings into sharp relief the deficiency of Merkel's extend-and-pretend method of addressing EU problems. I'm including here again a documentary video that I recently posted, the second part of the Aljazeera Big Picture documentary called, The Making And Breaking Of Europe 02/03/2017, which is particularly good in discussing how the nationalist sentiment against Greece over their debt crisis, actively encouraged by Merkel and her party and her coalition partners the Social Democrats, and supported by the other EU countries under pressure from Germany, fed into the narrow nationalist response by so many EU countries over the refugee crisis.

Merkel's policy in Greece was extend-and-pretend on a grand scale, avoiding a full-blown default but imposing draconian austerity measures that not only a healthy economic recovery impossible, but also extends the debt crisis itself indefinitely.

She also applied that approach to the refugee crisis, which has been at the crisis stage since at least 2011. That's six years ago now. Because of the geography, Turkey and EU member Greece landed with heavy responsibility for it from the start. (See Greece completes anti-migrant fence at Turkish border Ekathimerini 17.12.2012)

The Libya intervention gave a significant boost to the refugee flow. EU members France and Britain took the lead in that intervention, with of course support from the US under President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Libya previously absorbed a lot of refugees from Northern Africa, like those from Eritrea. (Migrant crisis: EU leaders agree plan to stop Libya influx BBC News 02/03/2017)

But this BBC News report from 2015 shows the countries of origin of most of the refugees in the year that Merkel was forced to recognize the crisis in a newly dramatic way and failed to push most other EU countries into compliance with her desire to resettle them across the EU: Migrant crisis: Migration to Europe explained in seven charts 03/04/2016.

The leading countries of origin reported by the BBC at that time were, largest to smallest numbers, were Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kosovo, Albania, Pakistan, Eritrea, Nigeria, Iran and Ukraine.

Wars generate refugees. Wars in the Middle East generate refugees into Europe.

Now there are new strains on Greece's capacity to house the refugees. (Commission awards €3.9 million in emergency funding to Greece to help improve reception conditions on the Greek islands European Commission 02/06/2017)

Rescue.org as of this writing has a featured Greece crisis briefing which apparently dates from around September 2016.

And, oh yeah, the Greek debt crisis continues, of course: Investors in Greece fear ‘accident’ as debt payment time nears Ekathimerini 02/07/2017; Helena Smith, Grexit? Greece again on the brink as debt crisis threatens break with EU Guardian 02/03/2017.

EU refugeesand the accumulating EU crises

Angela Merkel earned herself some good press in the world by announcing that Germany would accept a large number of refugees in the current crisis. A crisis which has been in motion for years but has reached a newly acute phase. (See this example of Merkel's good press: Jonathan Freedland, Mama Merkel has consigned the ‘ugly German’ to history The Guardian 09/11/2015)

Even former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis, one of Merkel's biggest bogeymen, had some good words for Germany on the refugee crisis (On German Moral Leadership Yanis Varoufakis 09/14/2015; Die moralische Nation FAZ 13.09.2015):

This summer we, Europeans, faced major challenges to our integrity and soul. The inflow of refugees tested our humanity and our rationality felt the strain of needing to make hard choices. Most European nations, and their governments, failed the test of history spectacularly. Closing borders down, stopping trains on their tracks, treating people in need as an existentialist threat, indulging in bickering at the level of the European Union as to who will bear a lesser part of the burden – all in all, Europe behaved abominably leading the Italian Prime Minister to utter in desperation: “If this is Europe, I do not want to be part of it.”

One country stood out, showing moral leadership on this issue: Germany. The sight of thousands of Germans welcoming wretched refugees who had been turned away in several other European countries was one to savour and one to extract considerable hope from. Hope that Europe’s soul has not been lost entirely. Chancellor Merkel’s relaxed leadership on the matter, even the magnanimous attitude of otherwise misanthropic German tabloids to the inflowing refugees, made amends for Europe’s failure to rise up to this humanitarian crisis.

But he hasn't forgotten Merkel's very different approach to the Greek debt crisis:

This is not the place to recount the vagaries of Greece’s never-ending crisis. And nor is there a need since its underlying cause has nothing to do with Greece: the real reason Greece has been imploding, while Berlin and the troika are insisting on a ‘reform’ program that pushes the country deeper into a black hole and keeps it hopelessly unreformed, is that the German government has not yet decided what it wants to do with the Eurozone.

Berlin knows well that, as it is, the Eurozone is non-viable. It needs major reforms. It needs mechanisms for recycling surpluses from the regions where they amass to the regions in deficit. Alas, Berlin has not formed an opinion, yet, on what these reforms should be, what form of European political union it wants, or how to convince Paris to go along with its priorities. So, while the Franco-German elephants tussle, little Greece is being squashed, awaiting the outcome of this interminable clash. In the process, millions of Greeks languish in desperation, hundreds of thousands of educated young men and women flee the country, and the oligarchy is having a field day exploiting the political impasse caused by last July’s surrender of our government. [my emphasis]

The continuing story, though, also sheds light on the deterioration and failures of the EU as an institution. In surprise move Sunday, Germany stopped train traffic for several hours between Austria and Germany. A large number of immigrants are coming into Austria via Hungary. They also instituted border checks at the German border, a very significant practical and symbolic action that at least temporarily suspends the normal functioning of what is known as the Schengen treaties or the Schengen system, which has been in place for years in which travelers have to show passports only in the first participating country they enter. For reasons not really clear to me, she also shut down all train traffic between Austria and Germany for a few hours starting Sunday. Hungary's authoritarian-leaning government, whose continuing democratic qualifications as a member in good standing of the EU should be doubtful, praised Germany for that.

The current refugee crisis is looking like another way-station on the road to the EU's stagnation and/or end. They couldn't deal with the financial crisis without impoverishing whole countries. They've largely ignored Hungary's authoritarian turn because securing democratic institutions is in practice a secondary priority for the German-dominated EU - which also engaged in more-or-less direct "regime change" in Greece and Italy over the euro crisis. The refugee crisis has actually been dragging on for years now, it just got more acute recently. And the EU couldn't find a way to handle that without resorting to nationalist measures.

Britain, as it often does, is thumbing its nose at its EU "partners" over the refugee crisis. France is advocating escalating the military action in the Middle East that's been driving the refugee crisis for years. And the Trump-like politicians all over are using the crisis to promote more xenophobia and nationalist hatred. It's great to see examples of decent people providing assistance to refugees. But the EU's collective failure in this latest crisis ain't a pretty picture.

Ska Keller, a German Green Member of the European Parliament and a key Green leader there, warns, "Wenn die EU-Mitgliedsstaaten keine gemeinsame Antwort auf die Flüchtlingskrise finden, treiben sie die EU selbst in die Krise." ("If the EU member states don't find a common answer to the refugee crisis, they are driving the EU itself into crisis.")

Luke Harding reports in Refugee crisis: Germany reinstates controls at Austrian border The Guardian 09/13/2015:

All trains between Austria and Bavaria, the principal conduit through which 450,000 refugees have arrived in Germany this year, ceased at 5pm Berlin time [Sunday]. Only EU citizens and others with valid documents would be allowed to pass through Germany’s borders, [German Interior Minister Thomas] de Maizière said.

The decision means that Germany has effectively exited temporarily from the Schengen system. It is likely to lead to chaotic scenes on the Austrian-German border, as tens of thousands of refugees try to enter Germany by any means possible and set up camp next to it.

German police began patrolling road crossing points with Austria at 5.30pm on Sunday. These checks may be rolled out to the borders with Poland and the Czech Republic. Chancellor Angela Merkel agreed the details in a conference call on Saturday with her Social Democrat coalition partners. The Czech Republic said separately that it would boost controls on its border with Austria.

The emergency measures are designed to give respite to Germany’s federal states who are responsible for looking after refugees. There is also discussion inside the government about sending troops to the road and rail borders with Austria to reinforce security, Der Spiegel reported.

As mentioned above, Hungary's rightwing, authoritarian government praises Merkel's government's action: "Hungary’s president Viktor Orbán welcomed the decision and said it would protect 'German and European values'. He and other east European leaders are insisting they will not accept a plan set out last week by the European commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker for mandatory refugee quotas."

This has become yet another problem with which the EU needed to deal in a substantive way. But instead, they followed Merkel's general approach of doing just enough to get by, or "extend and pretend" as it became known in the ongoing Greek crisis.

Wolfgang Münchau warns of the failure of the EU on the refugee crisis in Wiedereinführung von Grenzkontrollen: Europa ist auf dem Weg zurück zu Nationalstaaten Spiegel Online 14.09.2015. He notes that the national border controls are likely to spread. And probably won't go away quickly. This compromises the not insubstantial economic benefits of freer traffic within the Schengen area. He believes it will accelerate the nationalism that Germany has promoted during the euro crisis. And he notes that the lack of a common European foreign policy that could play a far more active role in Middle Eastern affairs also contributes to the refugee crisis.

Stated that broadly, I agree even with the last point. But creating "safe zones" like Republican front-runner Donald Trump is advocating would be part of escalating the civil war in Syria. And that raises every prospect of increasing the refugee flow and spreading further political chaos in the Middle East.

Gideon Rachman in the Financial Times echoes these grim presentments (The crises that threaten to unravel the EU 09/14/2015):

For the first time in decades, some of the fundamental achievements and tenets of the EU are under threat. These include the single currency, open borders, free movement of labour and the notion that membership is forever.

That refers to German Finance Minister Wolfgang's Schäuble's proposal to kick Greece out of the eurozone for a temporary basis.

Rather than rising to these challenges, the EU is creaking under the strain. Its 28 members are arguing bitterl

y and seem incapable of framing effective responses to their common problems.

These arguments are also taking place against an ominous backdrop. Large parts of the EU remain sunk in a semi-depression with high unemployment and unsustainable public finances. The problems of an imploding Middle East are crowding in on Europe, in the form of hundreds of thousands of refugees. And the political fringes are on the rise — with the latest evidence being the election of a far-left eurosceptic candidate to lead Britain’s Labour party.

What qualifies as "far-left" in the EU these days is advocacy for basic Keynesian macroeconomics instead of Merkel's and Schäuble's disastrous Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning economics.

He also notes how the restored national border controls could increase the nationalist trend with the EU:

Question marks over open borders will easily shade into wider issues about access to welfare systems and labour markets. That is because EU countries are realising that — in a border-free single market — a unilateral change of asylum rules by Germany has implications for the immigration policies of all member states. Once migrants get citizenship in one EU country, they have the right to move to any other, to work there and to claim benefits. But if free movement of people and labour come into question, so does the EU’s single market — its central achievement. [my emphasis]

Democracy and the Merkelized EU

Jens Wernicke interviews Horst Teubert, editor of german-foreign-policy.com in Deutsche Eliten setzen auf aggressivere Außenpolitik, Militarisierung und Krieg Nachdenkseiten 07.07.2014 on the tendency among German elites for greater German assertiveness in foreign policy.

Und man sollte nicht vergessen: In einigen Bereichen sind grundlegende demokratische Rechte innerhalb der EU inzwischen faktisch aufgehoben worden. Die Spardiktate in der Euro-Krise, die Aktivitäten der EU-Troika sind demokratisch nicht legitimierte Eingriffe von außen in nationale Hoheitsrechte der verschuldeten EU-Staaten. Darüber wird viel zu wenig gesprochen.

[And one should not forget: In some ways, basic democratic rights inside the EU have in the meantime become in practice annulled {more literally "ablated"}. The austerity diktat in the euro crisis, the activities of the EU Troika are interventions without democratic legitimacy in national sovereign rights of the indebted EU states. Too little is said about that.]

That's very true!

This is the most disturbing fact about the austerity policies that Angela Merkel has successfully imposed on the crisis countries of the eurozone: the contempt for democratic processes that she's shown in doing so. Securing peace and democracy was the fundamental purpose of the European Union. And unfortunately, the past tense is looking increasing appropriate.

And while Merkel was imposed ruinous economic policies on various countries and in the process ousting the government of Greece and dictating a change of government in Italy, the EU has managed to largely ignore the authoritarian turn that Hungary has taken. On the ugly turn in Hungary, see Glenn Ellis, Hungary: Towards the Abyss Aljazeera English 05/22/2013.

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, authoritarianism, eu, euro, european union, hungary

Hungary's authoritarian system and the upcoming April 6 elections

Paul Krugman invited Kim Lane Scheppele to explain on his blog how Hungary's current political system has been rigged to be authoritarian in fact while remaining nominally democratic in form. Her article, "Hungary: An Election in Question," (02/28/2014) is in five parts on the blog:

Part I: The Political Landscape
Part II: Writing the Rules to Win – The Basic Structure
Part III: Compensating the Winners
IV: The New Electorate (in which Some are more Equal than Others)
V: The Unequal Campaign

She describes how the ruling rightwing party Fidesz has created a situation where it would be virtually impossible for it to lose the election scheduled for April 6:

Fidesz won the last elections in 2010 fair and square. But this time the election is unlikely to be judged so favorably. The whole election framework – the laws, the institutions and even the new electorate – favors Fidesz because the governing party has used its four years in office with its two-thirds majority in the parliament to redesign every aspect of the electoral system to its advantage.

Fidesz also overwhelmingly dominates the offline media and has closed off almost all avenues through which opposition parties can reach the electorate. New decrees from local Fidesz-affiliated officials around the country and misleading instructions from election officials are creating last-minute campaign obstacles that put the opposition even more on the wrong foot.

Under the new election framework, the allied opposition parties cannot win a parliamentary majority, even if they gain more votes than the governing party. Simultaneously, the changes also make it nearly inevitable that the governing party will keep its two-thirds parliamentary majority even if it gets less than half of the overall vote.

They've done this by an extreme form of redistricting and other measures to have a nominally democratic election be held without essential elements that make a democratic election actually democratic:

These effects occur because the way that the districts are drawn and the votes are aggregated. It doesn’t even count all of the other things that Fidesz is doing to help the opposition lose, like monopolizing the media, operating an election office that is giving out misleading instructions and only selectively registering to vote Hungarian citizens who are living abroad.

If Fidesz is reelected under this self-dealing system, then it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the election has been rigged. Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s “mandate” will be tainted.

They also use voter suppression: "Fidesz has granted dual citizenship and therefore voting rights to ethnic Hungarians outside the borders who are overwhelmingly Fidesz supporters, while at the same time maintaining a system that makes it comparatively harder for Hungarian citizens living or working abroad to vote."

It's a sign of how badly the European Union has drifted away from its basic mission of peace and democracy that the EU is, while not ignoring the antidemocratic developments in EU member Hungary altogether, they are effectively shrugging their shoulders at it.

Tags: hungary, authoritarianism

Democracy and the prolonged crises in Europe

Jürgen Habermas is one prominent left thinker, one of a rapidly diminishing number with living memories of the Second World War, who has been and is seriously committed to the "European project," the European Union. But he also recognizes that the future of the EU depends on how Europe handles the current especially precarious moment. And he knows the performance of the EU leadership makes the prospect of their handling it well a downright desperate one.

In an interview last year (Jürgen Habermas: "Wollen europäische Bürger Suizid begehen?" Der Standard 23.05.2012), he says:

Alle Regierungen und alle verantworten Politiker wissen, dass Kerneuropa die Grenze zu einer Haftungsgemeinschaft längst überschritten hat. Aber alle stützen den nationalen Egoismus mit ihrem Schweigen, mit unvollständigen Informationen oder gar mit falschen Parolen. Ich fürchte, dass dieser Mangel an Leadership einen sehr hohen Preis kosten wird.

[All governments and all responsible politicians know that core Europe has long since past the borders of being a joint-liability community. But all of them support national egoism with their silence, with incomplete information or even with false slogans. I fear that this lack of leadership with have a very high price.]

This is a German-language reports from 2011 talking about the concept of a community of joing liability (Haftungsgemeinschaft), Die EU-Haftungsgemeinschaft - 29.09.2011:

The video was posted by Self Denker TV, which at first glance seems to have some kind of "libertarian" orientation. But this video seems to be a report from mainstream German channel ZDF and is reasonable so far as it goes. Its numbers of course are from 2011.

Habermas is known for his advocacy of a Verfassungspatriotismus for Germany, a patriotism for the democratic constitution rather than on "the country" as such. That, I might add, is a very Jacksonian idea; a very similar idea lay behind Jackson's famous Address to the People of South Carolina (1832). These days he's focused on the urgent need for a pro-European democratic movement to try to save the European project from the leaders who are bringing it to ruin. "Es hat bisher keine europäische Wahl gegeben, die diesen Namen verdient hätte" (There has so far been no European election that would have deserved the name"), he says in the interview.

Habermas holds both the major parties who support the EU but nevertheless stick to nationalistic perspectives and the major media in Europe for their failure to take European perspectives:

Vor allem müsste der enge ökonomische Fokus erweitert und die politische Dimension dieses großen historischen Projektes in die öffentliche Meinungsbildung einbezogen werden. Unsere Nationalstaaten, nicht nur Österreich, sondern auch Deutschland und Frankreich, sind längst zu klein geworden, um erstens mit der überfälligen Regulierung der Finanzmärkte voranzugehen und zweitens auf die Gestaltung der internationalen Ordnung und die Lösung der drängendsten Probleme noch Einfluss zu nehmen.

Wollen die europäischen Bürger wirklich Suizid begehen? Der nationalstaatliche Rahmen reicht nicht einmal mehr aus, um den kulturellen Reichtum und die sozialstaatliche Substanz ihrer Lebensform ins Museum zu stellen, geschweige denn am Leben zu erhalten.

[Above all, the narrow economic focus must be broadened and the political dimension of this great historical project must be brought into the public shaping of opinion. Our national states, not only Austria but also Germany and France, have since a long time become too small, first of all, to handle the overdue regulations of the financial markets and, second, to still have influence on the shaping of the international order and the solution of the most pressing problems.

Do the citizens of Europe really want to commit suicide? The national-state frameworks no longer suffice to install the cultural richness and the social-state substance of our form of life in the museum, not to speak of keeping them alive.]

Habermas sees the current neoliberal version of the EU as threatening to make the national democracies degernate into "façade democracies." He says that he would particularly address that question to French President François Hollande.

Speaking of the Merkel-loyal Socialist President of France, it's ridiculous for him to pretend he's addressing the need for growth and jobs while toadying to Angela "Frau Fritz" Merkel right down the line, even to the point of discouraging criticism of her! (Hollande findet Kritik an Merkel "ungeschickt" Der Standard 03.05.2012). The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month (David Gauthier-Villars and Gabrielle Parussini, French Leader François Hollande's Woes Fan European Fears 05/03/2013):

Mr. Hollande's ruling Socialist Party is in revolt. Party heavyweights are urging him to turn up the heat on Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and defy her prescription of austerity for resolving the euro-zone crisis. The French press last week splashed a Socialist Party draft paper that described Ms. Merkel as "selfish." ...

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Hollande said he has "passed on messages to reassure Ms. Merkel" that he "firmly believes in Franco-German friendship." But he also signaled that he needs her to meet him halfway on key policies such as creating a "banking union" that would use Europe's collective financial muscle to help weaker countries fix their banks.

"The risk is that Germany may want to wait until after its [September] elections to move ahead on the banking union," Mr. Hollande said. Germany has indicated it opposes some key aspects of banking union for now.

Ms. Merkel, for her part, is worried that Paris is moving too slowly to repair its economy and could face deepening economic trouble, people familiar with her thinking say.

In the neoliberal discourse that current dominates in European affairs, words like "reform" and "repairs" are synonyms for cutting wages and salaries, weakening unions, deregulation, privatization, weakening unions, and rolling back public services.

Meanwhile, Amnesty International is warning of that minimal social standards of housing, food and healthcare are in danger in some EU countries, Greece in particular. "The European Union won the Nobel Peace Prize but was unable to guarantee basic shelter and security for refugees in all its member states, nor equal rights for its six million Roma citizens," says AI in their Annual Report 2013: Europe and Central Asia:

Asylum-seekers in Greece continued to face severe obstacles in applying for asylum and increasingly risked detention in inhuman conditions – or violence at the hands of xenophobic vigilante groups.

Hungary allowed uniformed far-right groups to march through Roma neighbourhoods, chanting racist abuse and throwing rocks at the inhabitants. Across the region, Roma continued to face harassment and discrimination.

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, eu, euro, european union, france, françois hollande, greece, hungary, jürgen habermas

Angiebot Elmar Brok on democratic failures in Hungary and Romania and on the value of the EU from a German conservative perspective

Elmar Brok is a member of German Chancellor Angela "Frau Fritz" Merkel's conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) serving as a European Member of Parliament affiliated with the European People's Party, the EU parliamentary group for Christian Democrats. In this interview, he gives a useful perspective on the conservative pro-European, i.e., pro-EU, position is, The European Union on Trial Deutsche Welle English 07/22/2012:

Brok is a faithful Angiebot on the question of imposing austerity policies on the weaker partners of the EU. But because he is such a loyal Angiebot, it's interesting to see that he's making the worries about the state of constitutional democracy in Hungary and Romania a central issue in his presentation. We're still a long way from seeing the EU give democracy the priority it has been giving the comfort of bank CEOs in their euro crisis policies since 2009.

Angiebot Elmar Brok with the Princess Angie von Merkel

What he says about the American debt at around 11:50 and following, that it will be a terrible problem in two or three years, is ludicrous. And he faithfully parrots Frau Fritz' At around 8:15 and following, he sneers like a good Angiebot at the 50% youth unemployment in Spain, which he cheerfully and ridiculously blames on the Spanish educational system.

All of which makes me wonder why he's even bothering to talk about the constitutional issues in Hungary and Romania. Because he's a complete partisan of Frau Fritz' economic policies that are maximizing the economic damage of the depression. And his ugly cynicism about Spanish unemployment shows he doesn't give a flying flip about the role his Party's austerity policies are playing in destabilizing European democracies.

Just to be clear: I'm no fan of stability for stability's stake. The consensus of the largest right and left parties around the destructive ideology of neoliberalism/austerity/deregulation needs to be destabilized by democratic activism. But our elites have forgotten what even in the 1970s was taken to be clear lesson of the Great Depression, that a depression can destabilize democracies in ways that make them vulnerable not only to needed democratic change to authoritarian, anti-democracy movements.

Until we she Frau Fritz and her Party pushing hard for more effective regulation on banks and other large financial institutions, I'm going to assume that Brok's nice-sounding talk about the need for such, buried as it is in the usual Angiebot  cliches that stand for slamming down workers' incomes and more deregulation, to be nothing but hot air.

Tags: angela merkel, elmar brok, austria, eu, euro, hungary, romania, spain

At least Dany Cohn-Bendit hasn't forgotten what the EU is about

Dany Cohn-Bendit, head of the Green caucus in the European Parliament, was one political leader who pushed the EU to take action against the authoritarian constitutional changes in Hungary under the ruling Fidesz headed by President Victor Orbán .

Hungary's "kookoo autocratic" Victor Orbán with a like-minded leader

"We have a very serious democratic crisis in Hungary," he said.

He describes Orban as a "Hungarian Napoleon" who "sees himself as a little Hungarian Emperor" and as a "kookoo autocratic" leader pursuing "a radical dismantling of democratic atructures." (Ungarns neue Verfassung.Bewerten 13:19.Cohn-Bendit nennt Orban durchgeknallten Autokraten Die Welt 05.01.2012)

Tags: dany cohn-bendit, european+union, hungary, victor orbán

EU finally notices Hungarian democracy issues

Yesterday I was criticizing the EU for noticing Hungary's departures from austerity economics orthodoxy and getting all worked up about them, but neglecting their departures from democracy.

But on Wednesday, that did take some action, as Jack Ewing and James Kanter report in European Union Gives Hungary an Ultimatum New York Times 01/12/2012:

Faced with what critics say is an alarming drift away from democracy by one of its members, the European Union gave the Hungarian government a final warning Wednesday that it would face the start of formal legal action by next Tuesday unless it modified a series of measures that threaten the balance of power in the country.

The unprecedented warning by the European Commission, the European Union’s executive arm, came in response to the passage of a new Constitution and a number of laws at the end of last year that remove checks and balances on the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban in areas like central banking, the judiciary and the media. ...

Thorbjoern Jagland, secretary general of the Council of Europe, said by telephone on Wednesday that “there’s a real danger of Hungary going off the rails.” The council, based in Strasbourg, France, is responsible for enforcing the European Convention on Human Rights.

The escalating political confrontation with Hungary comes at a decidedly inconvenient time for Europe as well as for the government of Mr. Orban. The euro zone is struggling to survive a debt crisis while its economy slows markedly. But Hungary can ill afford to alienate its European Union partners when it is also heading into recession and negotiating for financial aid from the International Monetary Fund and the European Union to avoid defaulting on its debt.

The wording in that first paragraph is classical faux objectivtiy, though: "what critics say is an alarming drift away from democracy." They do get into more of the specifics. But our political press is just so wedded to that "this side says, the other side says" formula that they can barely tear themselves away from it even in cases like this where it's painfully obvious that they need to. For instance, that lede paragraph could have read something like this:

Faced with actions by the Hungarian government to restrict freedom of the press and religion, severely compromise the independence of the judiciary and rig electoral districts to retain the current ruling party in power indefinitely, the European Union gave the Hungarian government a final warning Wednesday that it would face the start of formal legal action by next Tuesday unless it modified a series of measures that threaten the basic democratic institutions of the country.

Instead, they used as formula that reads more like this: Supporters of democracy say democracy is democracy; enemies of democracy say authoritarianism is democracy; opinions differ.

We'll see if the Angiefied EU will give their democratic priorities greater weight than Angie's austerity economics demands.

A key factor in the current situation is that Hungary is part of Angie's EU-26 (excluding Britain) that she expects to approve austerity treaties by March that, among other things, would give the "Merkel EU" ultimate authority over national budgets. If Hungary breaks ranks on that immediate demand, other countries would be more likely to bail, because then Hungary would be the bad guy of the situation. This surely gives Hungary some serious negotiating clout right now, e.g., lay off griping about our authoritarian new constitution, or we'll torpedo your austerity treaty.

Tags: angela merkel, eu, euro, european union, hungary

While the EU fiddles, democracy in Hungary ...

"When the question is asked, when did Hungary devolve into a one party state from a multiparty democracy, the answer is now." - Marc Chandler (of Brown Brothers Harriman), A Quiet Putsch in Hungary? Credit Writedowns 01/02/2012

It was once conventional wisdom that a depression on the scale of the Great Depression could create favorable conditions for overthrowing democracies.

Like the self-destructive effects of austerity economics in a depression, that lesson doesn't seem to have sustained itself very well into the current depression.

The European Union, which was designed to be a bulwark of democracy, is obsessing over the sovereign debt crisis which the incompetence of the EU's main leaders (Angela Merkel in Germany, Nicolas Sarkozy in France, David Cameron in Britain) have made far worse with their frivolous non-solutions focused on implementing Herbert Hoover economics.

They are concerned, however, from Hungary's departure from bankster orthodoxy on the governance of their central bank, which Chandler also describes.

Angie's arrogant insistence on replacing the governments of Italy and Greece with debt-collection regimes in itself is badly damaging to democracy. The EU itself has overridden democratic institutions in those two countries by those actions. They are scarcely in a position to take a strong stand against authoritarianism in Hungary when they are focused on giving private banks' profits priority over democracy in the eurozone.

The new conservative government in Spain had promised not to raise taxes. Within a few days of taking office, they had to reverse that promise and propose tax increases. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Angie were in agreement this had to be done. So the Machtwort came from Berlin, "Yes, you vill raise ze taxes."

There is an EU summit coming up at the end of this month, at which Angie is scheduled to present the language of the treaty changes she's demanding. The proposals would essentially give the EU (read: Germany) the final say over national budgets, much as Angie is now exercising informally with Spain. It's hard to imagine that it will fly. It won't do anything to save the euro as long as Germany is dictating austerity budgets during a depression. We'll see over the next couple of months.

Tags: angela merkel, hungary

Hungary and democracy in the Angiefied European Union

The most obvious symptom of the failing of the European Union was the replacement of the Italian and Greek governments in 2011 at the demand of the EU to be replaced, without new elections, by "technocratic" governments whose only real task was to collect debts for the banks, i.e., keep payments on their sovereign debt current by slashing government spending and dismantling much of their public social net.

Austerity economics is terrible policy in the middle of a depression, no matter what kind of government is pursuing it.

But a couple of contrasts in the field of democracy are especially telling. In 2000, the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) won a plurality in the national election. The FPÖ was headed by Jörg Haider, then seen as the model "yuppie fascist" in European politics because of his repeated expressions of admiration for various aspects of the Third Reich. We now know that he was more interested in being on TV than in becoming a new Mussolini. He created a split-off party and, in 2008, died in a car wreck after getting drunk with a pal of his at a well-known gay bar in Klagenfurt, the capital of his home state, Carinthia.

But in 2000, the prospect of an Austrian government headed by an admirer of the Third Reich was taken seriously. The EU imposed "diplomatic sanctions" on Austria. Which really weren't terribly harsh. They essentially meant that Austrian diplomats in Europe wouldn't be invited to as many dinner parties as they would normally expect. There was much gnashing of teeth and rending of clothing in Austria about this (figuratively speaking!). But it was a clear statement by the EU nations that democracy was a baseline requirement for participation in the Union. Because they EU was always about political union on the basis of democracy for the purpose of preserving peace in Europe.

And it was effective. Austrian President Thomas Klestil, the head of state, agreed with the FPÖ and the second-place conservative People's Party (ÖVP) that the ÖVP would form the government with the FPÖ as the junior partner, without Haider as a minister in the national government. (Typically, the head of the junior coalition partner gets a Vice Chancellorship and the Foreign Ministry.) When the ministers were selected and formally proposed to Klestil, he rejected two of the FPÖ ministers because of particularly impolitic comments that had made.

In other words, the EU was prepared to defend democracy. The replacement of the Greek and Italian governments for the convenience of the European banks during 2011 had a very different look. And the contrast becomes even more dramatic when we think about what's happening in EU member state Hungary, where an elected government is taking far more drastic steps to establish authoritarian rule there than anything the Austrian government did under the ÖVP/FPÖ coalition.

Paul Krugman has been calling attention to the situation in Hungary under the ruling Fidesz party in his New York Times column and blog. As Charles Hawley reports for Spiegel International,'Democratic Deficiencies' Abound in Hungary 12/21/2011, "Media, churches, the judiciary and even the Hungarian central bank are all to be more tightly controlled by Fidesz officials in government."

What, you haven't heard the EU howling about Hungary abandoning democracy? Me neither. But let's be fair. The EU is expressing concern about some aspects of Fidesz policies. The ones that trample on neoliberal economic orthodoxy:

Meanwhile, Orban's legislative frenzy appears to be ruffling feathers with the European Union once again. European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso has reportedly written to the Hungarian prime minister asking him to withdraw a proposed law which some say would threaten the Hungarian central bank's independence. "I would forcefully advise you to withdraw two pieces of cardinal law now in front of parliament," Barroso wrote, according to the Hungarian news website origo.hu.

The law would change the bank's management structure and also that of the committee which sets interest rates. Both the EU and the IMF, in Budapest to negotiate measures to help insulate Hungary from the euro crisis, left abruptly last week due to concerns about the law. [my emphasis]

Drastically restricting freedom of speech and the press, curtailing religious freedom, fixing election laws Southern-segregationist style to secure indefinite Fidesz rule - why the bleep should Angela Merkel and her subservient EU bureaucracy care about stuff like that?

But threatening the sacred independence of the central bank, now that's something that has to be dealt with!

Angie and her junior partner Nicolas Sarkozy have transformed the EU. And definitely not in a good way.

The independence of the central bank is a neoliberal fetish. Sound economics as practiced by the Very Serious People who have wrecked the world economy says that the central bank should be independent of direct political control. Which is a good idea up to a point. But it's not the kind of thing that written on some sacred stone tablets of democracy somewhere. One of the problems of the euro is that the European Central Bank (ECB) is that it is independent but required by its (foolishly designed) EU legal framework to concentrate on controlling inflation and not acting as buyer of last resort for eurozone sovereign debt. How a country or the EU establishes the framework for a central bank's operation may be more or less advisable. But only in some extreme situation, such as setting it up to function as organized corruption (see the 19th-century Bank of the United States), is it a matter of basic democratic institutions.

I've never forgiven Walter Russell Mead for ridiculously calling the Cheney-Bush Administration "Jacksonian". And I generally don't think much of his analyses. But (stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day), in "Fascist Zombies" From Hungary Threaten EU The National Interest 12/22/2011, he manages to at least say some things that are reasonable, such as, "we are learning in Hungary, [the EU's] resources to defend democracy in an erring member state are not great. ... In Greece the problem is financial; in Hungary it is political."

Of course, Mead seems to approve of the Herbert Hooverish insistence that austerity economics and removing of protection for workers and ordinary citizens from the worst consequences of systemic economic failure are wonderful things. And, in connection with that sentiment, he makes the observation, "If voters refuse to make sensible choices, sooner or later they will lose the power to choose." It's not clear from this just how upset Mead actually is about the attacks on democracy in Hungary or about the EU's failure to do anything about it.

Which brings me to this latest piece of degeneration of politics in Angie's Christian Democratic Union (CDU): CDU-Finanzexperte."Griechen legen Hände in den Schoß und wir zahlen" Die Welt 30.12.2011. Hans Michelbach is head of the German Budestag's (lower house of Parliament) Finance Committee, and thus one of the leading figures on finance questions in Angie's party. He's saying outright that even the government Angie installed in Greece late in 2011 - which was approved by the Greek Parliament in at least technical compliance with democratic and Greek sovereign processes - should just be ousted and replaced by an EU trusteeship!

There was a time, not so long ago, that a senior German politician publicly demanding the ouster of a democratic government in Greece or any other European country would have been a scandal, even cause for an early retirement from politics. There's no indication in the report that Angie endorses Michelbach's demand. But this is the Angiefied CDU. Given her behavior toward Italy and Greece, I actually would not be surprised if she were encouraging this kind of threat against Greece.

What will she threaten to defend democratic institutions in Hungary? Don't hold your breath waiting.

Tags: angela merkel, hungary, jörg haider

French worries about Germany, Hungarian worries about fascism and anti-Semitism

This Deutsche Welle report deals with French concerns about Angela Merkel's policy of dominance in Europe, France: Running Scared of Germany? 12/08/2011:



This additional DW report talks about one facet of the politics of the hardline right, which is current dominant in Hungary, an EU member that is not part of the eurozone: Hungary: Censorship in the Theater 12/08/2011.



Paul Krugman calls attention to the trend to the authoritarian right in Hungary in his column Depression and Democracy New York Times 12/11/2011 and blog post, Central European Shadows 12/11/2011. In the column, he writes:

And in at least one nation, Hungary, democratic institutions are being undermined as we speak.

One of Hungary’s major parties, Jobbik, is a nightmare out of the 1930s: it’s anti-Roma (Gypsy), it’s anti-Semitic, and it even had a paramilitary arm. But the immediate threat comes from Fidesz, the governing center-right party.

Fidesz won an overwhelming Parliamentary majority last year, at least partly for economic reasons; Hungary isn’t on the euro, but it suffered severely because of large-scale borrowing in foreign currencies and also, to be frank, thanks to mismanagement and corruption on the part of the then-governing left-liberal parties. Now Fidesz, which rammed through a new Constitution last spring on a party-line vote, seems bent on establishing a permanent hold on power.

The details are complex. Kim Lane Scheppele, who is the director of Princeton’s Law and Public Affairs program — and has been following the Hungarian situation closely — tells me that Fidesz is relying on overlapping measures to suppress opposition. A proposed election law creates gerrymandered districts designed to make it almost impossible for other parties to form a government; judicial independence has been compromised, and the courts packed with party loyalists; state-run media have been converted into party organs, and there’s a crackdown on independent media; and a proposed constitutional addendum would effectively criminalize the leading leftist party.

Taken together, all this amounts to the re-establishment of authoritarian rule, under a paper-thin veneer of democracy, in the heart of Europe. And it’s a sample of what may happen much more widely if this depression continues.

Tags: france, germany, hungary, paul krugman

Chief editor Peter Frey of Germany's ZDF on Hungary and press freedom (in German)

This is a video from January 4 showing chief editor Peter Frey of Germany's ZDF delivering an editorial comment on Hungary and press freedom (in German). While American news outlets fall all over themselves to condemn Wikileaks for doing journalistic work, it's nice to be reminded that the mainstream press in some parts of the world are functioning at a more sensible and professional level. The video is in German.

Even at his best, he's not so good

"He" being Chris Matthews. Wonky Muse in a post yesterday focused on Dan Froomkin's comments about Bush's Iraq War speech this past week in It Came From Planet Bush Washington Post Online 09/14/07. In the article, he also discusses Matthews' response:

On MSNBC last night, anchor Chris Matthews was incredulous: "The fact that we have 36 countries fighting on our side in Iraq must be news to the soldiers over there. I don't know who these people are or how many divisions they have. I mean, all we read about in the papers are American GIs getting killed by IEDs and terrible accidents and all kinds of enemy action over there, usually in the battle of the civil war over there. The idea we're one of 36 countries fighting the war I think is ludicrous and why the president would throw that out there, I think it only opens him up to ridicule."

Despite his habitual drooling about the manliness of Bush and the 2008 Republican Presidential candidates and his warped attitude toward Hillary Clinton, Matthews has been critical of the Iraq War all along.

In this case, as Froomkin points out about the 36 countries to which Bush referred

A recent State Department report shows a total of 25 countries with armed forces in Iraq - and that includes Slovakia's six soldiers and Moldava's 11. Non-American troops total under 12,000, with most in non-combat roles, compared to over 160,000 Americans.

But even in making a sensible criticism of Bush's speech, Matthews made a fairly amazing blunder:

Matthews later asked Democratic Sen. and presidential candidate Joseph Biden about "the strange world we had described to us tonight... We're given a picture in 20 minutes of a country over there, an ally, you know, like Chiang Kai-shek used to be against the Japanese or Hungary against the Soviets, an ally, a country we care about and it's fighting for its life against our enemy, which is al Qaeda. No real references except once to the fact there's a civil war going on in that country. The notion that we're one of 37 countries fighting over there against the bad guys. There's so much of this that's truly - and I don't mean this in a cartoon sense - fantastic. When you're with the president, does he live in this world or does he just sell it?"

Biden's reply: "I don't know, Chris." (my emphasis)

Hungary was our ally against the Soviet Union? Say what? Actually, Hungary always fell within the Soviet sphere of influence and domination after the Second World War. It fairly rapidly became a "people's democracy", i.e., Soviet-style socialist country. And it remained a Soviet ally until the Warsaw Pact was dissolved in 1990. The Library of Congress has a country study of Hungary from 1989 available online. (Don't they update those country studies any more?)

My guess is that Matthews was thinking about the 1956 Hungarian uprising, which Charles Sudetic describes in that country study:

On October 23, a Budapest student rally in support of Polish efforts to win autonomy from the Soviet Union sparked mass demonstrations. The police attacked, and the demonstrators fought back, tearing down symbols of Soviet domination and HWP rule, sacking the party newspaper's offices and shouting in favor of free elections, national independence, and the return of Imre Nagy to power. Gero called out the army, but many soldiers handed their weapons to the demonstrators and joined the uprising (see Historical Background and Traditions , ch. 5). Soviet officials in Budapest summoned Nagy to speak to the crowd, but the violence continued. At Gero's request, Soviet troops entered Budapest on October 24. The presence of these troops further enraged the Hungarians, who battled the troops and state security police. Crowds emptied the prisons, freed Cardinal Mindszenty, sacked police stations, and summarily hanged some member of the secret police. The Central Committee named Nagy prime minister on October 25 and selected a new Politburo and Secretariat; one day later, Kadar replaced Gero as party first secretary.

Nagy enjoyed vast support. He formed a new government consisting of both communists and noncommunists, dissolved the state security police, abolished the one-party system, and promised free elections and an end to collectivization, all with Kadar's support. But Nagy failed to harness the popular revolt. Workers' councils threatened a general strike to back demands for removal of Soviet troops, elimination of party interference in economic affairs, and renegotiation of economic treaties with the Soviet Union. On October 30, Nagy called for the formation of a new democratic, multiparty system. Noncommunist parties that had been suppressed almost a decade before began to reorganize. A coalition government emerged that included members of the Independent Smallholders' Party, Social Democratic Party, National Peasant Party, and other parties, as well as the HWP. After negotiations, Soviet officials agreed to remove their troops at the discretion of the Hungarian government, and Soviet troops began to leave Budapest. Nagy soon learned, however, that new Soviet armored divisions had crossed into Hungary.

In response, on November 1 Nagy announced Hungary's decision to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact (see Glossary) and to declare Hungary neutral. He then appealed to the United Nations and Western governments for protection of Hungary's neutrality. The Western powers, which were involved in the Suez crisis and were without contingency plans to deal with a revolution in Eastern Europe, did not respond.

The Soviet military responded to Hungarian events with a quick strike. On November 3, Soviet troops surrounded Budapest and closed the country's borders. Overnight they entered the capital and occupied the National Assembly building. Kadar, who had fled to the Soviet Union on November 2, assembled the Temporary Revolutionary Government of Hungary on Soviet soil just across the Hungarian border. On November 4, the formation of the new government was announced in a radiobroadcast. Kadar returned to Budapest in a Soviet armored car; by then, Nagy had fled to the Yugoslav embassy, Cardinal Mindszenty had taken refuge in the United States embassy, Rakosi was safely across the Soviet border, and about 200,000 Hungarians had escaped to the West.

With Soviet support, Kadar struck almost immediately against participants in the revolution. Over the next five years, about 2,000 individuals were executed and about 25,000 imprisoned. Kadar also reneged on a guarantee of safe conduct granted to Nagy, who was arrested on November 23 and deported to Romania. In June 1958, the Hungarian government announced that Nagy and other government officials who had played key roles in the revolution had been secretly tried and executed.

Anybody can make a slip. But referring to Hungary as being an American ally against the USSR in the way that China was a US ally against Japan during the Second World War is really kind of goofy.

Froomkin's column has quite a few links to critical and analytic commentary on Bush's speech.

Tags: bush, chris matthews, hungary, iraq war