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The catastrophic situation of refugees on the Greek island of Lesbos after the Moria camp fire is the subject of intense debate in Germany. People take to the streets to demonstrate, call on the German government and the European Union to act quickly.
State politicians such as the Interior Minister of Lower Saxony, Boris Pistorius (SPD), declare themselves ready to accept those affected. Newspapers and online portals carry big reports, the ARD reported Wednesday night in a “hot spot.”
But how do other EU countries see the current situation? Are there many citizens there too who pressure governments to bring refugees into the country? Are politicians debating the right strategy for a durable solution? A look at various European countries shows a mixed picture.
Austria
There are a few hundred steadfast people roaming the center of Vienna on Wednesday night. They loudly demand the admission of refugees from Lesbos.
With slogans such as “Europe started this fire” and “No one is illegal, right to stay everywhere”, the protesters protest against the attitude of the government led by Sebastián Kurz. Because he categorically rejects a partial inclusion of the stranded in Moria. Interior Minister Karl Nehammer of the conservative People’s Party (ÖVP) names “violent migrants” as the arsonists in the countryside.
“All of Vienna hates the ÖVP,” protesters chant in front of the Chancellor’s headquarters late at night, while Finance Minister Gernot Blümel defends government policy on television. It is frankly “naive” to want to bring more immigrants into the country, where according to the latest statistics on individual parts of Vienna, more than 90 percent of all school-age children are not German as their mother tongue.
He was “very disappointed” by the Vienna city government, which decided on Aug. 31 to host 100 children from Greek refugee camps in the Austrian capital, said Blümel, who was familiar with the chancellor.
According to UNHCR figures, Austria has granted more protection to refugees against political persecution than Germany and most other EU countries in the last ten years, measured in terms of population.
In a decade, the number of residents with a migrant background increased by more than a third, mainly in Vienna. Outside of the federal capital, the fate of the Lesbos people hardly plays a role in the public debate.
France
Together with Germany, his country will make a proposal to host refugees from Greece, President Emmanuel Macron said during a conference of seven southern EU countries on Thursday in Corsica. Help is urgently needed, especially for minors. You also have to conquer other European countries, so Macron. “We have to show solidarity with Greece,” he said.
The excitement in France is limited after the Moria drama. The issue is barely present in the media, which deal in detail with the increase in the crown, a new legal text to fight Islamism or the gas conflict in the Mediterranean.
This is probably also due to the government’s initially cautious reaction. “France has never shirked its responsibility and will make its contribution to solidarity,” government spokesman Gabriel Attal said Wednesday, without being more specific. Secretary of State for European Affairs Clément Beaune had spoken to his colleague in Athens and asked him to provide “accurate information” on what the Greek authorities needed.
Poland and Eastern Europe
In the region between the Baltic States and the Balkans, the latest images from Greece have not sparked a new debate on migration. Major newspapers reported on the fires, noting that human rights activists had long pointed to the miserable conditions in the camp.
However, from an Eastern European perspective, the conditions there were never a scandalous symbol of the failure of the EU’s refugee policy. It was precisely countries like Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia that had significantly impeded a European solution to the migration crisis. In 2015, Warsaw, Budapest, Prague and Bratislava rejected the idea of distributing newcomers to EU countries.
Under the conservative right-wing government, Warsaw strictly refused to accept refugees from the Mediterranean region, for example. The reason: the country is already home to hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians and Belarusians. Their number was sometimes estimated at around one and a half million.
However, very few immediately fled the fighting in Donbass or the oppressive Belarusian regime of dictator Alexander Lukashenko. Most come to work in the eastern EU countries: the Polish and Czech economies, which were booming until recently, needed construction workers and the health sector needed nurses.
Italy
The fire in the refugee camp was reported in the news, but there is no sign of any political debate. Politicians have yet to comment on the plight of the more than 12,000 homeless refugees on Lesbos. The ministers of the center-left coalition or leaders of right-wing opposition parties did not come up with the idea of suggesting acceptance by those affected or aid to Greece.
When it comes to refugees, most Italians look almost exclusively at Lampedusa and the other coasts of southern Italy. This year, some 20,000 immigrants have landed there in small boats from North Africa, which the Roman government wants to send to other EU countries immediately.
“It’s crazy, the government is accommodating illegal immigrants on a cruise ship,” complained the head of the Lega, Matteo Salvini, just a few days ago about the quarantine measures off Sicily. There is only one solution: “Admit ports, send the government home.”
In Italy, the right-wing media in particular are critical of the Moria debate in Germany. The fact that Foreign Minister Heiko Maas is now demanding that Greece be helped “sounds like a joke in bad taste,” writes the conservative daily “Il Giornale”. After all, Germany had “shut the door in the face” of Rome on refugees.
But there are also other voices: “Applause”, “grace”, “this is the Europe we dream of”, “the true heart of Europe”, the Italians wrote on Twitter when they learned that there were thousands of people in Germany. Demonstrated for the reception of refugees from Lesbos.
Sweden
After the summer parliamentary recess, the Government and the opposition debated on Wednesday the major issues of the coming months and current concerns in the country. The refugee situation on Lesbos was not one of them.
Sweden’s escalation of gang crime has been in the headlines for weeks, in August a twelve-year-old girl was shot in the street. Social Democratic Prime Minister Stefan Löfven now made a connection in parliament between immigrants, the lack of integration and the latest wave of crimes: “That is as clear as day.”
From the point of view of the head of government, spontaneous aid actions to welcome refugees are out of the question. Sweden has had a restrictive immigration policy for a long time. There is a heated discussion about this in the red-green coalition. The Greens reject a 26-point plan by the Social Democrats with the exception of three points. However, the position of the smallest partner in the coalition is weakening, in various polls the Greens were recently below four percent.
Only the Green MEP and former Swedish Culture Minister Alice Bah Kuhnke spoke aloud. She accused the Stockholm Social Democrats and the conservative opposition of “a lack of boundless solidarity.” And Bah Kuhnke asked EU Internal Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, who came from Sweden, to finally present to the international community her long-announced strategy for asylum and migration policy: “It’s not just urgent, it’s burning.” .
