Other than its open-air outlet mall, busy with shoppers from neighboring Slovakia and Hungary, there’s little memorable about the Austrian village of Parndorf. On Friday, August 27, however, Parndorf had its short moment of fame – for the worst of all possible reasons. On the hard shoulder of a highway outside of the village, Austrian police found a truck filled with 71 dead bodies, including those of four children. The dead, thought to be Syrians, had paid a criminal gang to drive them from Hungary to Germany, in a vehicle that was terribly ill-suited for the purpose.
The tragedy epitomizes the failure of Europe’s response to the inflow of asylum-seekers from the Middle East, North Africa, and Afghanistan. The consequences of this failure will be serious. For one, it is already undoing the freedom of movement in the European Union (EU). The Schengen Agreement of 1985 eliminated border controls among most EU countries (and some non-members, such as Switzerland and Norway) but it left the duty of protecting the common ‘Schengen’ border and processing asylum requests to the individual member states.
As a result, a handful of countries, such as Italy or Greece, are bearing the bulk of the costs of rescue operations in the Mediterranean Sea and of accommodating new refugees. To make things more complicated, certain EU countries, most notably Germany, have become more attractive for asylum-seekers than others. Although they are legally required to apply for asylum in their country of entry (say, in Greece), many refugees continue clandestinely to Germany, oftentimes using the services of smugglers.
In response, EU countries are reinstating different forms of border controls, effectively moving away from one of the EU’s fundamental freedoms. At Budapest’s Keleti Train Station, for example, refugees have been barred by the police from boarding trains bound for Germany, even though they possessed valid train tickets. Thousands of them remain camped around the iconic station in Hungary’s capital, waiting for an opportunity to leave.
One of the saddest aspects of the crisis is the sheer waste of human capital. Though mostly young, energetic, and not without skills, the refugees are unlikely to join Europe’s labor force. Formally, the EU requires member states to allow employment of asylum seekers only if they were in their host country for over 12 months. And, in practice, various administrative barriers stand in the way even after that period.
The inflow of refugees has also unearthed the worst instincts harbored by some Europeans. Daniela Santanche, a member of the Italian Chamber of Deputies from Silvio Berlusconi’s party Forza Italia, has suggested that ships with migrants be sunk before reaching Italy’s shores. Slovakia, in turn, expressly refused to accept any asylum-seekers, with the exception of 200 Syrian Christians.
There have been exceptions. The most notable is Germany, which is planning to receive 800,000 asylum seekers this year alone. Also, in a spontaneous act of solidarity on Facebook, 12,000 Icelanders offered housing and airfare to prospective refugees, petitioning their government to increase the existing quota of refugees the country accepts every year.
While laudable, the benevolence of Icelanders is not going to be enough to solve the ongoing refugee crisis. What is needed is leadership for a common EU response, and a joint system of border protection and asylum processing, which is needed to sustain free movement of people in the EU.
