Hour of the migrant

On September 14, ministers of the internal affairs and justice of the EU countries will gather in Brussels for an emergency meeting. The main question: what to do with migrants that a record number arrived in Europe this year: according to various estimates, from 340 thousand (Frontex agency data) to half a million. In May, the European commission announced a plan for the resettlement of 40 thousand people. At the same time, Brussels agreed to allocate € 6 thousand to the social arrangement of each refugee, € 6 thousand. Today we are already talking about a limit of 160 thousand - Hungary, Greece and Italy cannot cope with the influx of migrants. Over the past two years, their number increased by 600%, in Greece alone in July 2015 alone they asked for refuge 50 thousand people.

The most delicate and largely unexpected conflict for Brussels: new EU members have actually declared the right to pursue their own migration policy. Moreover, on the basis of approaches that public opinion in “Old Europe”, without hesitation, would regard racist and authoritarian. The authorities of Poland, where the next parliamentary elections will be held in October, hastened to publish the results of the surveys: 70% of Poles against the tributary of refugees from Africa and the Middle East. Slovakia announced her readiness to accept only Christian refugees. But then the prime minister of Hungary Viktor Orban, who started the construction of the first “metal curtain” in Europe, went: Hungary from Serbia, from where the main uncontrolled flow of migrants comes from, is already separating the 178-kilometer line of four-meter fences with barbed wire. And almost half of the country's population is glad to the emergence of the “walls of Orban”, who also put the police with the right to search for private apartments in search of non-religious migrants without sanction.

Whether supporters of “hard measures” understand that refugees who die in the sea and on the ground (stunning shots with migrants who were suffocated in the van on the Budapest -Vienna Autoban, as well as a dead child, thrown out onto the Turkish coast, bypassed all the newspapers of the world) - this is the reproach of the whole of Europe - it is almost impossible to legally receive a visa in the EU Syrian or Iraqi families.

On the other hand, Europe for centuries through thorns went to the victory of liberal, democratic principles and values. She suffered them. He is ready to accept those who share these values. But in reality, everything happens differently. In Europe, still impressed by the terrorist attack in the editorial office of the Paris weekly “Charlie Ebdo”, not to mention dozens of other incidents, fears are growing due to the fact that about 80% of newly arriving migrants are Muslims, who, according to the recent study by Pew Research Center, will already be 71 million - 10% - 10% - 10% - 10% - 10% - 10% - 10% population. The prospect of demographic distortion at the expense of the community, in general, is poorly integrating into the local environment, worries many Europeans. And this is not xenophobia. This is just a willingness to defend liberal, democratic value.

It is important, if we talk about the current crisis, and another: the illegal transfer of thousands of people to the “dream territory” has become a profitable business, which, no matter what measures are taken in Brussels, will simply not surrender its positions. According to the experts of The Migrant Files website, to the present day to get to the countries of the Schengen agreement, $ 16 billion (!) Have already been spent by migrants from the near and Middle East. Moreover, the “northern route” is considered one of the cheapest: by train through Russia - to the border with Finland and Norway. And this means that the problem that fell on Europe is one way or another to us.

Photo: Michela Yakkarino