in jedem Land der EU

Das Problem der EU seit vielen Jahren und in vielen Bereichen (vor allem des Euros und jetzt der Fluechtlingskrise) ist der Versuch viele Staaten mit grundverschiedenen oekonomischen und kulturellen Charakteristiken mit verschiedenen historischen Erfahrungen und Traumata in ein gleiches Schema pressen zu wollen, ein Schema das hauptsaechlich von D definiert wird. Niall Ferguson (Glasgow-born Harvard Historiker, verheiratet mit Ayaan Hirsi Ali) dessen politischem und historischem Urteil ich sehr viel mehr vertraue als vielen anderen sagte das in einem Artikel in der Times diese Woche auch. E sagt der Versuch einer "ever closer union" ist das Experiment das die EU zum explodieren bringen wird (ichhaenge den Artikel unten an).

Ich habe wirklich den Eindruck in D hat noch niemand kapiert wir sehr der Rest Europas (maybe not the Swedes) dies fuer ein -in diesem Ausmass zumindestens- Deutschland-verursachtes Problem haelt and how pissed off many are.

EU is a failed experiment that threatens to blow up the lab

I wish I had a euro for every article I’d read predicting “the End of Europe” in the past five years. Nevertheless, the migrant crisis is shaping up to be at least as big a challenge to the EU as the eurozone crisis.

Once again the core country, Germany, is at odds with the periphery. In the case of the eurozone crisis, Berlin imposed tough conditions on mainly southern European countries in return for bailouts of their banking systems. In the case of the migrant crisis, Berlin has succeeded in imposing new quotas for asylum seekers on the rest of the EU, with the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia vainly voting against the plan.

Not surprisingly, there is a great deal of annoyance in the smaller countries about German high-handedness. Angela Merkel’s decision to suspend the Dublin convention on refugees last month and effectively to say herzlich willkommen to hundreds of thousands of migrants was, after all, unilateral. Viktor Orbán, the populist Hungarian prime minister, condemned German “moral imperialism”. “We are Hungarians,” he explained. “We cannot think with German minds.”

This story properly begins with a security crisis. Much as some Europeans would like to talk as if the refugee crisis had been caused by a mysterious natural disaster, the reality is that it is in large measure a consequence of western foreign policy blunders, of which too-little-too-late intervention in Syria was only one.

The fact is that from the moment the misnamed Arab Spring began at the end of 2010, the United States and Europe have been at sixes and sevens.

Traumatised by their experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan, our leaders thought they could confine their interventions to airstrikes, preferably unmanned, plus occasional hashtags. Over-optimistic about the revolution, they failed to see that Islamists, not secular democrats, would be the beneficiaries. And, ignorant of history, they overlooked the possibility that the states their ancestors had created from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire might simply fall apart.

The problem of democratic politics comes next. Our leaders, after all, were merely carrying out the wishes of electorates that could not turn away too quickly from the problems of the Muslim world. Some fell for the old lie that the problems of the world were of the West’s making and if only we would go away an era of peace and love would dawn. Others reasoned that “they” should just be left to fight it out among themselves.

Today’s mass migrations cannot be understood independently of this sequence of events, though it should be remembered that large-scale population displacement was already on the increase well before 2010. Syria is only one of ten countries where conflict has led to massive population displacement. According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the total number of displaced people around the world now exceeds 50 million. In that context, even a movement of one million people into Europe would be of minor significance.

So why is everyone in Europe getting so worked up? Part of the answer is simply that the influx is large by European standards. In all, 4.1 million people sought asylum in Germany in the 61 years between 1953 and 2014, an average of 67,000 a year. This year’s total already exceeds that of citizens of the former German Democratic Republic who moved to the Federal Republic between 1989 and 1990 as a result of German reunification (fewer than 600,000).

The last time people were flowing into western Europe in their millions was in the aftermath of the Second World War, when the defeat of Nazi Germany and her allies led to the displacement of an estimated 25 million people. Between six million and seven million ethnic Germans were expelled from eastern Europe and territory annexed from the German Reich. The overwhelming majority of these dispossessed settled in what became the Federal Republic.

Yet the dispossessed after the Second World War — like those who crossed from East to West after the fall of the Berlin Wall — were Germans. Today’s newcomers to Germany are, according to the latest statistics, from Syria (30 per cent), Albania (25), Afghanistan (7) and Iraq (5). Those seeking asylum are overwhelmingly Muslim.

In that sense, the relevant parallel is the Gastarbeiterprogramm of the 1960s, which over 12 years (1961-73) led to 2.6 million workers arriving in West Germany for what was supposed to be temporary employment in its booming economy. Although initially intended to recruit other Europeans, the programme was extended to Turkey, and Turks soon became the most numerous “guest workers” in the country. When the programme was terminated in the economic hard times of the early Seventies, the majority stayed.

The reason that many Europeans view a new and larger wave of Muslim migration with unease is not crude “Islamophobia”. It is partly that the labour markets of continental Europe have such a poor track record when it comes to absorbing non-European workers.

The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that the unemployment rate for foreign-born workers is at least double that of native-born workers in Belgium, Sweden, Austria, the Netherlands and Denmark. It is at least 70 per cent higher in Finland, France and Germany. (Note that in Britain it is only 18 per cent higher and in the United States there is no difference at all.) Muslims granted asylum in northern Europe fare especially badly in this regard.

Viktor Orbán is not a very nice man, and the sentiments he expresses are even less nice. But to pretend that continental Europe does not have trouble assimilating Muslim immigrants is delusional. Denying it only fuels populism. So what is to be done? The European establishment’s answer is that we should regard the wave of refugees as an opportunity. Economists of the Dr Pangloss variety argue that it is the answer to the mounting demographic crisis caused by low fertility rates in most EU countries.

Meanwhile, believers in the dream of “ever-closer union” argue that the crisis illustrates the need for a common European immigration policy, just as the crisis of the eurozone illustrated the need for banking union and fiscal union. Such arguments are surely wearing a bit thin with voters.

So what is the alternative? Amid all the chaos, Britain is trying to get other EU members to concede that treaty changes may be necessary to address its longstanding concerns, in order to help it win its promised referendum on EU membership. But this is the wrong negotiation at the wrong time. What each successive European crisis reveals is not that Britain needs more opt-outs, but that other EU member-states would benefit from having opt-outs too.

In practice, this is already happening. Some members, including Germany, have temporarily opted out of Schengen this year. With the benefit of hindsight, a number of south European countries would have suffered a great deal less hardship since 2009 if they had also opted out of monetary union.

A final and important point to make is that a looser union will be easier to enlarge. Enlargement appears to have stalled since the accession of Croatia in 2013. Ten Mediterranean countries and six east European countries are covered by a European Neighbourhood Policy. None looks close to becoming an EU member.

Yet enlargement is happening by itself — though not in the usual way — as millions of people vote with their feet for a better life in Europe.

Europeans have to choose, and choose soon, which enlargement they would prefer: one that seeks to stabilise and improve neighbouring states; or one that leaves those states to fall apart, driving their populations into desperate flight.

The phrase “somewhat looser union” does not have the same lofty ring as the “ever-closer union” visualised in the Treaty of Rome. But a somewhat looser union is surely preferable to a union that blows itself apart.

Centripetal forces are not necessarily better than centrifugal ones. In nuclear physics, fusion and fission are both explosive. The EU is an experiment in fusion that has gone wrong. It is time to halt the experiment before the laboratory is blown up.

Niall Ferguson, The Times, 28/09/2015