Quote:
Originally Posted by Habsfan09
What alternatives have the V4 provided to the suggested solutions and which steps have they taken other than crying and complaining.
What exactly is the problem you are talking about? The 23 million Syrians or the circa million people Merkel invited to Europe? If you mean the second group, then that's an exclusively German problem. I would say though that someone who is brutal enough to make a condition of asylum in Germany a willingness to break the laws and fund the underworld of every country on the way from Turkey to Germany will get the type of immigrants it deserves.
We should obviously do all we can for people in trouble rather than prioritise a specific group that travels to our front door.
About solutions proposed here - well obviously there are different politicians with different ideas. Keeping to the Dublin convention is an important part of the solution but Merkel's first action was to rip up the existing EU agreements about this. Others suggest off-shore processing - e.g. in North Africa, so people have no incentive to make the dangerous sea journey, they could go from e.g. Eritrea to the offshore location to submit their application. Again, an asylum system based on willingness to complete physical trials such as the small boat journeys is pretty brutal.
But in terms of the German-invited refugees - it's purely an internal problem for Germany and the attempts to force it onto other countries spreads the view those countries have no say in what happens in the EU.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louis Cyphre
Let's take Hungary as an example. Orban has marched the country towards authoritarianism long before the refugee crisis.
Now during the crisis the authoritarian leader of Hungary acted like an authoritarian and the people who previously liked him for being an authoritarian still like him. No surprise there.
So essentially you say there has been no change?
Yes, the rise (or re-rise) of Orban can be dated back to the former communists imploding after the Balaton speech, though the left were still the second largest party.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%90sz%C3%B6d_speech
What has changed over the last in Hungary is that the second largest party is now the extreme right Jobbik party - whereas Orban was much more moderate (e.g. Fidesz sit with CDU in the European parliament whereas Jobbik would certainly never be allowed)
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louis Cyphre
In Poland the conservative Law and Justice party won the election in 2015 after the remarks made by Angela Merkel regarding the refugees. One could assume some causality there but their party's candidate already won the presidential election earlier that year. This was before Merkel's statement and suggests there might be another explanation. Maybe someone who has more than my superficial insight can comment.
In the first round of the 2015 presidential election the Law and Justice candidate beat the PO candidate by less than 1% - in the parliamentary election later that year the gap was more than 13%.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louis Cyphre
I know very little about the politics of Slovakia
Of particular note in 2016 election would be
Slovak Nationalist Party (nationalists) - up from 4.55% to 8.64%
Our Slovakia (fascists) - new party scoring 8.04%
SDKU (EPP member, provided national PMs from 1998-2006 and 2010-2012, only party to oppose building anti-migrant fence) scored 0.27% and left parliament.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louis Cyphre
and the Czech republic.
SPD up to 7% in the polls for this year's election. Certainly the precedent from Slovakia is that will be a wild underestimate.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louis Cyphre
My personal theory is that it takes time before an appreciation for a democratic culture can take root and flourish in a country.
Presumably more than 70 years, given the AfD's polling numbers in Germany itself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Louis Cyphre
In other words, Merkel might have stoked the fire but the forest was already burning.
Yes, but the fire was going out. We'd finally got the SNS out of parliament altogether in 2012. Merkel has reversed the direction of travel.
Last edited by LektorAJ; 02-06-2017 at 04:26 PM.