The EU and the Challenge of the Migrants

Anyone who thought that the biggest challenge Europe would face in 2015 would come from the economic problems of Greece, or the political situation in Ukraine, must surely now after a summer of human tragedy at sea and on land be reconsidering. The desperate plight of the many migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, and the disarray of Europe’s leaders in their response, dwarfs all the other issues in the political in-trays in Brussels and Berlin. And it set me thinking back to a short holiday I had earlier this summer, in the Polish city of Kraków.

Kraków is one of the great tourist destinations of Central Europe. It is a beautiful city, and its medieval city centre – complete and miraculously almost untouched by the Second World War – is Poland’s answer to Prague, though fortunately without quite so many visiting stag parties to upset the peace and tranquillity of its cobbled streets and outdoor cafés. The people are friendly, the food is hearty, the beer is good: it is no wonder that Kraków is Poland’s most visited city.

But alongside the old city centre with its central square Rynek Główny, the biggest market square in Europe, and the royal palace of Wawel, Kraków has one other must-see destination. For 40 miles west of Kraków is the small town of Oświęcim, better known by its German name of Auschwitz. And no visit to Kraków is complete without a visit to Auschwitz.

Most people have heard of Auschwitz, and know – or think they know – about the horrors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp complex, built by the Nazis in the Second World War. We have learnt about the Holocaust at school, we have seen the documentaries on TV, we can possibly even remember the statistics. But nothing prepares you for seeing Auschwitz and Birkenau in the flesh, to stand where more than one million people were murdered in under 4 years. It is deeply moving, and the quite excellent guides make sure that none of the horror of the place escapes even the most ignorant and blasé of visitors.

Even today, 70 years after the War ended, Auschwitz defies any thinking person not to be affected, not to be forced to consider the twin evils of nationalism and discrimination and the horrors that can result from them.  And if it has this effect on visitors today, one can only wonder at the effect it must have had on the people of Europe in the immediate aftermath of the War, when the true nature of the camps and the scale of the atrocities committed there first became apparent.

And it is hard not to see this as the key to the political history of Europe ever since. To visit Auschwitz is to begin to realise why the people who first saw the camps, without the protection modern visitors have of at least some idea what to expect, were so adamant that there could never be a repeat, and to understand why the politicians in the post‑war period were prepared to go to such lengths to defend against a resurgence of nationalism and discrimination.  It is, surely, the explanation for the absolute insistence of the political class of the 1950s, led by Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman, on the need for Europe’s peoples to set aside their centuries-old differences and come together, a rapprochement between old foes which was sealed by the 1963 Élysée Treaty of Friendship, signed by President Charles de Gaulle for France and Chancellor Konrad Adenauer for Germany.

And it also explains why the politicians even today continue to see no alternative at all. It is the narrative of the last 70 years, the EU, ever closer union, multiculturalism and so on – in short, the landscape we are all now so familiar with. For the political class, it is so self-evident and so imperative that we continue this narrative that minor details like explaining it to the population and winning electoral consent are often seen as optional extras which must not get in the way of the all-dominating need to avoid another Auschwitz.

But because Europe’s integrationist leaders find the linkage between their objective of peace and cultural harmony in Europe and their policy of ever closer union so compelling, they have assumed that others will automatically understand it too, and will also make the link from the consensus goals (peace and tolerance) to the chosen methods (union and multiculturalism). And as a result they fail to see that they still need to make the case publicly, now even more than before as memories of Auschwitz fade and the pressures of new migrations rise, and by not doing so they risk leaving behind a growing section of European popular opinion.

And so over the decades since 1945 the political narrative has moved from “We want to establish peace in Europe, and we must work towards an ever closer union to achieve this”, to simply “We must work towards an ever closer union”. In short, for too many of Europe’s political class, the means (ever closer union) have become the end. And, with bitter irony, the means have therefore also become a cause of the very disagreements between nations and peoples that they originally strove to overcome.

Policies are increasingly promulgated by the political class without the underpinning of popular consent – the negotiations to solve the Eurozone crisis are just one example – and the political elite is increasingly unwilling to invest in the hard work and dialogue to create the consent their policies need. And the electorate is noticing, and its willingness to accept this state of affairs is rapidly evaporating. Hence the rise of nationalism, of angry populist parties, from UKIP in the UK to Syriza in Greece.

And hence too the rise, in the face of the waves of migrants, of something even more virulently evil – a return to discrimination and xenophobia, a desire to close the doors, even to rid our society of “the other”.

Back in Kraków is the Jewish quarter of Kazimierz. It is a heartening part of the city, just a mile from the centre and replete with a vibrant Jewish community, working synagogues and restaurants serving delicious traditional Polish Jewish food. But one mile further on, one comes to the rather grittier suburb of Podgórze. Here the sentiments – and the graffiti – are altogether different, and one does not need to speak Polish to understand the universal sign of a Star of David with an angry line right through it.

It is a fair bet that the person who scrawled that graffiti has never been to Auschwitz.  It is Europe’s tragedy that collectively, we are all forgetting what Auschwitz stands for, and why – despite the pressures, despite the challenges of the many migrants demanding our help and stretching our tolerance as they do so – we should continue to resist the twin evils of nationalism and discrimination.

 

A version of this article was also published in Financial News.