However, the loons still exist. And the most spectacular statement about migration and the EU came from a country that punches above its weight... Belgium.
The Belgian prime minister Charles Michel has said something remarkable: nations, especially the V4 group (Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Slovakia) that don't want to embrace thousands of Muslim migrants, should be expelled from the Schengen area.
The precise quote from a press conference was the following:
By stubbornly, repeatedly, systematically refusing to show a minimum of solidarity, these countries automatically open the political debate about the Schengen area, they in fact open the question of their own place in the Schengen area.Cool.
As you see on the map, the blue Schengen area isn't identical with the EU. Some EU countries – Croatia, Romania, Bulgaria, Cyprus – aren't in the Schengen yet. The British Islands have a permanent opt-out. Other countries outside the EU – Switzerland, Norway, Iceland – belong to the Schengen. All the microstates are either officially or de facto parts of the Schengen area.
What is amazing is the perversely inverted logic used in the politician's words. Why would he expel our countries from Schengen? Because our countries don't show "solidarity" in importing thousands or millions of exotic migrants. What an irony. The very purpose of the Schengen area is that it is a united passport area without internal borders – which means that the main task or only task that the Schengen area must fulfill is to protect the external borders.
The following is really the point of the Schengen area:
When it comes to migration and asylum policies, the only duty of the member states that remains is the duty of the states at the Schengen boundary to do the tasks that the countries had to do separately on their numerous national borders.In particular, the main purpose of borders has always been to protect the territory surrounded by the borders from the arrival of people, especially numerous people, from foreign countries who shouldn't arrive and whose arrival is deemed illegal because it's not in the interests of the country or countries inside, according to the views of the relevant people who are inside.
The Visegrád countries are doing nothing else than describing – and maintaining – the basic purpose of the Schengen area and the basic tasks that it must fulfill, especially to prevent hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants from the South and East from entering the shared passport area. And Mr Michel would like to expel us for that? That's really crazy.
Politicians and voters in countries like Belgium may be obsessed with the project of Islamization of their territories. And they may think that the forced redistribution of lots of illegal migrants is a textbook example of solidarity. Great. They are free to call it solidarity. But solidarity isn't a duty. Try to imagine that someone wants you to justify that the lack of this solidarity may be used as a justification to question someone's membership in the Schengen area. Needless to say, you won't find any hint of such a justification because it's completely crazy. The Schengen area has always been about the shared defense of the area against undesirable external influences – and lots of illegal immigrants were always the top example of these influences – so you may only find the opposite.
The countries that question that the illegal migrants should be prevented from entering the Schengen area may be expelled!
Michel's assertion may be just a part of his domestic political games because nutty assertions like that may be popular among his potential voters. Or he may be saying crazy things like that because he is a homosexual, as some Czech commenters like to suggest. But words may sometimes come true and verbal plans may sometimes materialize. Imagine that those suggestions would come true.
Well, I hope that we could keep our restricted passport area with other Visegrád countries – and other members of Schengen that would like to remain passport-united with us. I think it would be great to admit Bulgaria, Romania but also Serbia and Macedonia quickly enough. In reality, the Schengen area wouldn't "expel" anybody. The Schengen area would split into two. Which of these two would deserve to be called "the" Schengen area, the actual successor of the Schengen area that has existed?
I find it obvious that it would be the "Visegrád Schengen". It would be appropriate for the area with the rotten brains such as Charles Michel's brain to invent another name instead of the Schengen, e.g. the European Caliphate Area. We are mostly rational nations and we wouldn't care too much about the names. But what matters is the beef. If a part of Schengen split from the rest of Schengen because it finds the Islamization of itself to be a moral duty, it would play a similar role as Al Qaeda or the Islamic State, which are also defined by turning the Islamization of new territories as their main moral duty, and this rogue portion of the Schengen area should be treated analogously with the Islamic State.
All such weird propositions are undoubtedly weakening the unity on the European continent. My nation is almost certainly the most Euroskeptic country in the EU but I think it is rather clear that a majority of Czechs considers the Schengen area as a genuinely positive achievement of the European integration. It is a detail, relatively speaking, but it's a nice detail if you don't have to undergo the border checks while crossing to Germany and Italy or any other Schengen countries. To glue this almost uncontroversially positive feature of the EU with the most controversial – and, regionally, hated – policies such as the forced redistribution of Muslim migrants means to liquidate the last pillars of the European integration that have the ability to unite the nations.
Michel is a Francophone and one aspect of his speech is very popular with all the French speakers: They like to say that you can't treat the EU as a menu à la carte (menu from which you can cherry-pick). If you want to cross the internal borders without passport checks, you also need to Islamize your territories. I am sorry but this connection is absolutely irrational. We want convenient borders (and also trading without tariffs and other things) but we still want to be protected from millions of illegal immigrants from the external regions. These two wishes do not contradict each other in any way. And it is indeed correct for rational individuals, politicians, nations, and unions of nations to cherry-pick the things that are good and abandon those that are not. If the EU has any future, it must be a union à la carte! An EU that forces bad things on the member states is a toxic project that must be killed.
0 Comments