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Chaotic one Refugee crisis like 2015 could be repeated today: the Burgenland police chief at that time and now is one of those Governor Hans Peter Doskozil (SPÖ) convinced. Politicians “have not yet presented a solution,” he criticized in an APA interview. Doskozil calls for processing centers outside of Europe so that only those with the right to asylum can come to Europe.
“What must the last minutes and seconds have been like for these people?” Doskozil is not releasing this thought. On August 27, 2015, 71 dead refugees, including four children, were found in a refrigerated truck parked in a breakdown compartment on the A4 in Burgenland. They had suffocated in the hermetically sealed cellar on Hungarian territory the day before. Doskozil was chief of police in Burgenland at the time, with the drama suddenly becoming the center of media attention.
“Luckily nothing escalated”
A few days later, thousands of refugees stranded in Hungary crossed the Nickelsdorf border crossing into Austria. These weeks were a “constant challenge,” “keep calm and don’t panic,” Doskozil recalls. It was an “excellent team effort.” “But really,” says Doskozil, “we were lucky that nothing escalated.”
The verdict of the migration investigator Gerald knaus The development of European refugee policy over the past five years is devastating. “Collective failure of many, many actors,” he says. Until today, it has not been possible to articulate how border controls can be carried out taking into account the existing law, especially human rights.
The consequence is the violation of any regulations at the external borders of the EU. “It seems that politics is currently only seeing this path or that of total loss of control.”
The focus on border protection, which sometimes violates legal norms, has an advantage for governments: Cooperation from others is not needed, according to Knaus. But the price is “extremely high, it is the end of the Geneva Convention on Refugees.”
Austria has quickly become one of the “most closed countries”. For example, the “total rejection” of the evacuation of minors from the Greek islands is not a question of capacity, but a “political signal of toughness, without an answer to the question of what else should happen to these children, 6,500 under 12 years”.
Because large refugee movements hit almost all countries unprepared, the public got the impression that politics had lost control over them. Little by little, parties and governments across Europe used the issue of migration, in a negative context, to assert their interests.
But: “It was not refugee immigration but politicization as a refugee crisis that changed the political balance of power in Austria. Since then, there has been a kind of normalization of right-wing populist migration policy,” says the political scientist Sieglinde Rosenberger.
University of Vienna
For him it was “striking” that the political party tried “not to frame the facts” of the fall of 2015, says the sociologist and lawyer Wolfgang Gratz. A framework could have read: ‘Yes, we were surprised, but we have learned from it and we can also be proud of the joint effort we have achieved.
Suttner University of St. Pölten
At the EU level, “very little or nothing” has happened in terms of European migration policy since 2015, criticizes the head of the UNHCR office in Vienna. Christoph Pinter.
“There is still no Common European Asylum System (SECA), little solidarity, no emergency plans,” says Pinter, disappointed. It found that Member States lacked the will to address the issue “sensibly”. The interests of the nation-state stand in the way of the commons, there is no common vision.
Gubisch
“We in Europe have to decide who can immigrate and not the traffickers,” Chancellor says. Sebastian Kurz (ÖVP). Therefore, illegally entered migrants must be detained at the EU’s external border and returned to their home countries or safe third countries. One of the most important lessons from the refugee crisis of five years ago is that “illegal migration in Europe is illegal and therefore must stop.” Many countries have now changed their policies, including Germany.
“We have to protect our systems, our security authorities and our welfare state from being overwhelmed.” Also one should “not import any new anti-Semitism from the Arab world into the country.”
AP
Politicians believed the 2015 refugee crisis did not draw the correct conclusions Christian kern, then manager of ÖBB and then chancellor of SPÖ. If you look at what is currently happening in Lebanon, Yemen, Syria and Afghanistan, it shows that you are again relatively unprepared. Closing borders cannot be the only answer.
A “national populism” emerged that did not seek solutions. That is why he called “Vollholler” to Kurz’s call for the Mediterranean route to be closed. “The problem cannot be solved with simple answers.”
WHAT / GEORG HOCHMUTH
A chaotic refugee crisis like 2015 could repeat itself today, of which he is the Burgenland police chief at the time and the governor today. Hans Peter Doskozil (SPÖ) convinced. Politicians “have not yet come up with a solution.”
If someone gets asylum or doesn’t have to clear outside of Europe, processing centers outside of Europe would be the key. Only positive asylum cases could still reach Europe, then the distribution could also be clarified.
The federal government is doing very little and is running low on empty words.
APA / ROLAND SCHLAGER
Politicians had not taken any precautions: European states had not agreed or coordinated, criticized Doskozil. This is also evident now in the Corona crisis. At the time, Hungary simply did not communicate and simply sent the refugees towards the Austrian border. “That shows an image of Europe that is reduced to the interests of the national states, and that has not changed until today”, believes Doskozil. Politicians “did not react to the refugee problem and have not yet come up with a solution.”
From chief of police to governor
In any case, the refugee crisis was decisive for his own career: as chief of police, Doskozil earned a reputation as a silent crisis manager during these weeks, which is why Chancellor Werner Faymann (SPÖ) brought him to Vienna as Defense Minister in January 2016. With his access to refugee policy, Doskozil does not necessarily make friends on the left wing of the SPÖ to this day. Would you have gone, if you had been a politician in 2015, like so many other politicians, to the Westbahnhof in Vienna, a symbol of welcoming culture at that time? “I don’t think so, I have to be honest.”
In fact, Doskozil has a “tough approach” on the issue of migration, as he himself puts it: whether or not someone is granted asylum must be clarified outside of Europe, demands the governor. Such Procedure centers outside Europe Doskozil believes that the key would be that only positive asylum cases could reach Europe. Then you could also clarify the distribution.
Against the admission of children from Greek camps
In Doskozil’s view, the federal government is doing very little. Migration policy must be promoted at the European level, but “none of that happens”, criticizes Doskozil. Discussing only things like Greece’s support for the protection of external borders are “empty words”.
On ZiB2 Sunday night, Doskozil speaks out against the admission of children from Greek refugee camps: “Of course, humanity is important, but just as important are the lessons from 2015 that the factor of the state of right is equally important. ” The federal government would have to create the framework for this. Doskozil is against the opinion of the SPÖ Chief Pamela Rendi-Wagner.
“To be embarrassed”
Also former head of ÖVP Reinhold mitterlehner finds the current government’s refusal to take in even a single minor refugee from the Greek camps “internationally is disgraceful,” as it told the “Standard.” It was a consequence of the political shift to the right in the ÖVP as a result of the refugee crisis, a shift to the right that can still be felt today.
Today’s Chancellor, Sebastian Kurz, always sat at the table at the time, but he was the only one who recognized early on how much political capital could be drawn from the issue. Outwardly, he took over the FPÖ’s rhetoric and pretended to be an outsider. “The strategy worked,” Mitterlehner said. He believes that without this crisis the coalition would not have broken up prematurely.
