The decision by Prime Minister Viktor Orban to hold a referendum in Hungary on – in truth, against – EU migrant quotas is a frontal challenge and direct impediment to attempts, however hesitant, by the union to respond collectively to the migrant flows. And what makes the decision doubly regrettable is that Orban has couched it not in terms of the financial challenge that migration does genuinely represent, but in terms of a notional cultural challenge to Hungarian and European religious and ethnic homogeneity.
“The quotas would redefine Europe’s cultural, ethnic and religious image,” he fulminated. “The view of the Hungarian government is that neither the European Union, nor Brussels, nor European leaders, nor any European body have the mandate for that.” His implication is clear: Hungary and Europe are Christian and white, and should stay that way, a xenophobic vision that is in reality profoundly at odds with the spirit of the European Union. Not for the first time, Orban’s harsh anti-migrant rhetoric eloquently demonstrates that it is his authoritarian, nationalist politics, and not the resettling of refugees, which are out of step with European values.
EU governments agreed by majority vote in September, despite opposition from Hungary and other central and eastern states, to set up a two-year scheme to take 160,000 asylum seekers from Greece, Italy and Hungary, according to obligatory national quotas. Orban refused to take part in the scheme, and with Slovakia challenged the measure in court.
The suggestion, once more, that Hungary should repudiate any responsibility to act on decisions taken by fellow member-states marks another dangerous step towards the unravelling of EU cooperation and one of the Union’s greatest achievements, the Schengen system of free travel.
That process has been taking a battering in recent days. Austria has followed Denmark and Sweden in announcing severe cuts to the numbers it will accept. And on Wednesday, Vienna and nine Balkan states agreed on several measures to choke off the flow of refugees from Greece, effectively imposing their own response to the migrant crisis ahead of the EU's March 7th summit with Turkey on the issue.
As refugees begin to accumulate on the Greek-Macedonian border, Greece was excluded from Wednesday’s meeting, and not surprisingly has responded with threats to disrupt EU talks if its plight continues to be ignored and its role in any solution sidelined.
Hungary’s attempt to give its obstructionism a quasi-democratic legitimacy does not reflect well on its people’s genuine commitment to a united Europe.