98 per cent of Hungarian voters rejected European Union mandatory refugee quotas in the referendum on October 2. The voter turnout fell short of the 50 per cent threshold, making the plebiscite invalid, despite the government’s propaganda.
The result was a blow for Viktor Orban, Hungary’s conservative nationalist prime minister, who is the staunchest opponent of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s liberal policy towards migrants and refugees within the ex-communist EU member states. He links asylum-seekers from the Middle East with terrorists and crime and says that he is defending Europe’s Christian identity against a Muslim influx. He is in favour of setting up centres outside the EU to receive and process asylum claims.
Mr Orban has a good reason to claim public support as people who backed his anti-migration stance outnumbered those who voted to join the EU in the national referendum in 2003.
Mr Orban, who used the referendum to boost his popularity at home, has said that he will submit a constitutional amendment regarding refugees, ignoring the low turnout.
The backlash against refugees is felt across Europe as support for anti-immigration, xenophobic parties have risen to record levels. Hungary sealed its border with Serbia last September, a move that closed the main route used by asylum-seekers from the war-torn Syria, Iraq and elsewhere to reach northern Europe. Other EU countries soon followed suit.
Last year’s plan to relocate 160,000 refugees from Greece and Italy across Europe resulted in diplomatic squabbling, souring relations between EU member states. The Hungarian and Slovak governments filed a lawsuit, challenging the mandatory distribution of refugees according to national quotas. Hungary was supposed to take 1,300 refugees. It has not accepted a single one under the scheme. The EU resettlement scheme has failed as fewer than 6,000 people have been relocated so far
Europe’s migration crisis has stabilised since the EU signed a deal with Turkey in March. Under the agreement, migrants who have managed to cross the Aegean Sea will be sent back to Turkey. In return, Turkey has been given billions of euros in aid and the promise of visa-free travel for Turks visiting most of the EU.
Hungary and Poland have emerged as Brussels’s most vocal critics following the UK’s vote to leave the EU. Mr Orban and Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of Poland’s governing Law and Justice (PiS) party, now see the opportunity to push their so-called “cultural counter revolution”, which focuses on family, community and Christianity, rather than liberal rights. But the problem with their conservative agenda is that it backslides on democratic norms.
Mr Orban’s conservative Fidesz party won a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2010. The Orban government reduced the jurisdiction of the constitutional court, sacked scores of judges, appointed allies to state institutions, concentrated media ownership in its hands and changed electoral boundaries to favour Fidesz. Checks and balances on executive power were weakened.
Mr Orban has built the illiberal state modelled on countries like Russia that is incompatible with EU values. Luxemburg’s foreign minister said recently that countries like Hungary should be kicked out of the EU for violating the bloc’s fundamental values. He was the first EU foreign minister who called another member state to be expelled from the bloc.
The ultraconservative PiS party won an election in October 2015, taking back control of the EU’s sixth-largest economy after eight years of rule by the centre-right, pro-European Civic Platform (PO) party that was founded by Donald Tusk, now president of the European Council.
Mr Kaczynski, who is not Poland’s prime minister, but he is the real power behind the government, has studied how Fidesz consolidated its hold on Hungary and now sees Hungary’s prime minister as a role model. The PiS follows the same steps.
The government in Warsaw has taken control of public media and packed state-owned enterprises and independent institutions with people whose loyalty is more important than competence. The PiS-dominated parliament passed legislation, which limits the Constitutional Tribunal’s ability to assess if laws adhere to the constitution, triggering the EU’s first probe into the violation of the principle of the rule of law in a member state. Mr Orban, however, has pledged to veto any EU attempt to sanction Poland.
Mr Orban and Mr Kaczynski have embraced anti-Brussels sentiments. They want to reduce the influence of the European Commission and return powers to national capitals. Both men complain about German dominance in EU affairs and call for changes to the EU’s governing treaties. They would prefer the EU to be a trading bloc of sovereign countries. Their vision of the EU, however, contrasts with the fact that Hungarians and Poles have the most favourable view of the EU in the current form of any member nations.
