The number of illegal immigrants to Europe continues to grow, writes Gazeta.Ru. In July, the number of registered migrants in the EU reached 107,500 — three times more than in July last year, reports the monitoring agency Frontex. Migrants are attacking border areas: Middle Eastern migrants are moving through Turkey to Greece and Eastern European countries, while North African refugees are trying to reach Italian shores.
Among the former communist bloc states, the migration crisis is felt most acutely in Hungary. There, 120,000 initial applications for political asylum have been registered this year. Hungary's location on the eastern border of the European Union makes the country a natural gateway to prosperous Europe for Middle Eastern migrants. According to local residents, migrants cross the borders in groups of several dozen people, writes the Wall Street Journal.
Hungarian authorities said they would deploy several thousand additional police officers to patrol the 160-kilometer border with Serbia. Their main task is to prevent the illegal flow of migrants from Serbia. In addition, Hungarian authorities plan to toughen the penalty for illegal border crossing to up to four years in prison. On the Serbian-Hungarian border, Hungary is erecting a barbed wire fence.
There are already more than 40,000 refugees in Greece and Italy. Italian authorities have repeatedly called on pan-European supervisory bodies to help the country cope with such an influx of migrants. However, the main goal of migrants is the more economically developed countries of Northern Europe. Nearly half of all refugees try to settle in Germany. More than 40% of initial asylum applications are filed there — about 83,000 people. For comparison: in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and the three Baltic states combined, only 6,080 applications have been filed in total this year.
In the current situation, Eastern European countries blame their Western neighbors. According to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, Western European EU members lobbied for legislation that makes it easy to obtain refugee status and social benefits in EU countries. "The policies of center-left parties have led to an influx of illegal immigrants flooding Europe," the ruling Fidesz party said last week. "This threatens the emergence of an unprecedented social, economic and cultural conflict in the region."
Officials in Western Europe retort that the migration crisis is an emergency and can only be solved through joint efforts of all EU member states. "Some EU countries want to see only benefits in the union," German Vice Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel said in an interview with Bild. "Such an attitude will destroy Europe."
Political debates over the migration issue intensified last autumn, when discussions resumed in Brussels on a draft law that envisages the even distribution of refugees across the entire European Union. The goal of this innovation is to alleviate the economic pressure from illegal migrants on the countries that are the main targets of migration flows — Italy, Greece, Hungary and others. In May, Brussels proposed relocating some migrants from Italy and Greece to other European countries. To determine how many people can be sent to a particular country, it is proposed to develop a quota system that would take into account the level of output, national unemployment, total population, and the number of migrants already accepted.
But such an initiative was met with sharp criticism from Central and Eastern European states. In their view, they are not obliged to take on additional economic costs because of a problem largely provoked by the actions of Western European powers. "I have only one question: who bombed Libya?" Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico said in an interview with an Austrian newspaper. "Who created problems in North Africa? Slovakia? No."
The population of Central and Eastern European countries also opposes mandatory distribution of migrants. According to a survey conducted by the Czech Institute of Sociology, over 70% of the country's citizens said that the Czech Republic is not obliged to accept refugees or migrants from the Middle East and North Africa. Similar data were obtained in Slovakia and Poland.
"The population of the Czech Republic has been very homogeneous for a long time; we are not used to different cultures or other races," said Ondřej Benešík, chairman of the Committee on European Affairs in the lower house of the Czech parliament. "Many may accuse us of racism or xenophobia. I would call it caution."
Eastern European states declare the possibility of accepting migrants only on a voluntary basis; no mandatory quotas should exist, in their opinion. For example, Czech authorities said they were ready to grant asylum not to 1,850 refugees, as Brussels demands, but only to 1,500 people. At the same time, Czech authorities insist on the need to conduct a kind of "exams" for such migrants: interviews will determine how ready the refugee is to integrate into Czech society and whether he represents a suitable workforce for the country. Slovakia makes similar demands. The country's authorities categorically disagree with the quota of 1,100 migrants. Slovakia is ready to accept about 200 Syrian refugees, and only on the condition that they be Christians. According to the country's Interior Ministry, Muslim refugees "will not feel at home" because "the Muslim population in Slovakia is very small." And Slovakia's prime minister added that his country is not to blame for the Syrian conflict.
The growing conflict within Europe exposes problems associated with the very possibility of European integration and adherence to the ideals of multiculturalism. «It seems that for the first time in history, Europe has been unable to cope with a problem,» said Czech Prime Minister's adviser on European integration Tomáš Prouza. – «We managed to overcome the economic crisis, we managed to overcome other problems as well. I think this is the first time that Europe is not coping.»