Europe's migration fixation could play into the hands of its rivals

There are few spectres that petrify Europe more than that of migration. For much of the continent, migration is an important security challenge due to the imputed tendency of migratory flows to contribute to terrorism and social and economic dislocation. However, it is increasingly clear that Europe’s fear of migration represents a far greater security challenge than migration itself.

In recent years, Europe has clearly signalled its fear of migration. Greece, for example, acting partly in response to the Taliban’s victory in Afghanistan, has constructed a new 25-mile wall on its frontier with Turkey. The Greek government has been quite open about the purpose of the wall, which aims to ensure that Greece “will not be a gateway to Europe for illegal Afghan migrants.” Likewise, the borders of Spain’s enclaves in North Africa – Ceuta and Melilla – are fortified by border fencing. Denmark, reflecting an anti-migration wave that has swept across much of Scandinavia, despite the region’s reputation for liberal politics, is attempting to force over 200 Syrian refugees to return to their homeland. And earlier this year, the European Parliament approved plans for Frontex, the EU’s border security force, to increase its number of operational staff from 1,400 to over 10,000 by 2027. There is little that frightens Europe more than the prospect of large-scale migratory flows.

However, in making its fear of migration so apparent, Europe has, ironically, exposed its own weakness. In recent months, Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko has exploited Europe’s phobia of migration as a means of punishing the EU for the sanctions that it has legitimately levelled against his anti-democratic, repressive behaviour. In short, Lukashenko is helping refugees from Afghanistan, Syria and elsewhere to cross into EU countries such as Poland and Lithuania. Already in 2021, some 4,000 migrants have entered Lithuania from Belarus. In 2020, for reference, Lithuania’s immigration authorities detained just 81 migrants entering the country from Belarus.

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko (AP)

The EU has justifiably labelled this policy a ‘hybrid war’. It is a deliberate ploy by Lukashenko to punish the EU for the sanctions it has progressively implemented in response to the Belarusian president’s human rights violations and anti-democratic repression. Lukashenko surely hopes to create discord within the EU and to dismantle consensus for future sanctions. The implicit threat is that each time the EU approves new sanctions against Belarus, member states such as Poland and Lithuania could be subjected to fresh waves of refugees.

The response of the EU to this ‘hybrid war’ has, thus far, exhibited the same hysteria that has typified its migration policy in the last decade. The Lithuanian parliament swiftly voted to build a barrier on its border with Belarus to impede migratory flows. Lithuanian border guards have also been told that they can, if necessary, use force to turn away migrants from Belarus. Likewise, the Polish army has been drafted to build a new fence on the border. This barrier is explicitly modelled on the fence erected by Viktor Orban on the Hungary-Serbia border in 2015. At the time, this fence was criticised by EU leaders and officials; now, it has become a staple and legitimate response to migratory flows.

Barbed wire is installed by Lithuanian soldiers on the Lithuania-Belarus border (Reuters)

This exposes a certain irony. In the last decade, EU leaders have often stoked fear about the security threat posed by migrants. However, the hysterical policy response that this fear has generated – new border walls, deportations, ‘go home’ vans, detention centres – has only exposed the EU to new security challenges. Repressive leaders such as Lukashenko can exploit the discord and panic that EU leaders articulate in response to migratory flows as a means of leverage. It would be no surprise to see Lukashenko’s weaponisation of migration emulated by the EU’s other rivals in the years to come. If, by contrast, EU leaders demonstrated a welcoming and sympathetic posture towards migrants and refugees, this means of leverage would disappear.

In all, the EU has exposed itself as a bloc petrified by the spectre of migration. This, in turn, has generated new means of leverage for its rivals, as Lukashenko has already demonstrated. And, as ever, it is migrants and refugees caught up in the middle: rebuffed by the EU and weaponised by its rivals, they are the biggest losers of this unsustainable status quo.