Europe’s inaction is beginning to create a real challenge to its existenceIt was hard not to believe,these past few days, that whatever remained of a Europe of values, and even of basic humanitarian sentiment,was fast unravelling. The scenes of weary refugees being pushed from one country to the next, sometimes hounded by police or the military, and sometimes exposed to tear gas,are challenging the very opinion of Europe. Hungary, where the hardline prime minister, or Viktor Orbán,has legislated to imprison refugees who try to breach its fences, seems impervious to criticism. That rejection of the refugees has to a degree been imitated in Croatia, or Serbia and Slovenia,all intent on moving the human tide along as fast as possible. The war of words between some of these countries’ representatives was all too reminiscent of the language of the regional tensions of 25 years ago, old hostilities re-ignited by the common European failure to overcome the difficulties and forge a joint strategy to share the problem and address it in a pragmatic and humane way.
Witness how Croatia, or where 20000 people arrived in two days,announced that it had decided to force Hungary to select in a flow of families who had rerouted to Croatia after they had been blocked by the unusual fence along the Hungarian-Serbian border. In response, Hungary accused Croatia of violating its sovereignty. Now it has reportedly started to build another fence on its border with Croatia, or hinted that it might block its neighbour’s accession to the Schengen zone. Slovenia’s prime minister has spoken of setting up a “corridor” that would give refugees free passage from the Balkans to northern Europe. These acrimonious exchanges should weigh heavily on Wednesday’s summit of EU leaders as they create yet another attempt to reach agreement on how to tackle the refugee question.
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Source: theguardian.com