Eastern European States Reject EU Migration Plan

Migrants cross the Hungarian border. (Wikimedia Commons)

Hungary, Poland, and the Czechia rejected the European Commission’s (EC) newest proposal for managing incoming migrants on September 24. The countries criticized the proposal for reportedly being too lenient on migrant screening and entry.

The already long-delayed pact proposed by Germany would have required the participation of all 27 EU member states in either accepting asylum seekers or assisting in sending back those who were denied asylum. The policy was intended “to rebuild trust between Member States and to restore citizens’ confidence in our capacity to manage migration as a Union,” said EC President Ursula von der Leyen. 

Each member state would have been obligated to contribute their share based on both GDP and population size, according to the proposal. However, Central and Eastern European states opposed the idea of accepting migrants based on a quota and criticized wealthier EU members for not doing more.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban openly criticized the EC’s claim that the plan was a breakthrough for the bloc’s policy, stating, “The breakthrough will come when the Hungarian proposal is accepted that says that nobody can enter the territory of the European Union until one of the member states closes their asylum procedure.” Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis similarly called the proposal “unacceptable” and suggested that migrants should be turned away at the border and sent back to their home countries.

The Visegrad Group (V4), a political alliance consisting of Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Slovakia, has consistently resisted attempts to reform the EU’s migration plan, demanding the most stringent possible border control policies. At the same time, migrant rights activists voiced their disapproval of the proposal for not doing enough for asylum seekers and appeasing right-wing populists. 

The positions of the V4 countries have drawn criticism from the European Court of Justice (ECJ), which condemned Budapest for denying asylum seekers food in and keeping them in transit centers with detention-level conditions. The ECJ also ruled earlier this year that the refusal of Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest to take in refugees was a violation of EU law. 

Due to the newest plan’s failure, the EU will have to find a new approach to address migration, which analyst Stefan Lehne says will remain “one of the biggest challenges Europe will face in the next 20 to 30 years.” The rejection of this proposal will also likely affect the EU’s open border Schengen system and plan on legal migration within Europe, which is expected to be released in 2021.