Saturday 21 / September / 2024
Brussels: Just hours after the Dutch, the Hungarian government also announced that it intends to apply to be exempted from EU asylum procedure regulations. In Strasbourg, the Hungarian minister of European affairs, Janos Boka, declared that this so-called opt-out from the asylum laws known as the Dublin Regulation was needed.
“Hungary believes, like the Netherlands, that stricter national controls on migration are essential, to protect public services and sovereignty,” said Boka.
The new Dutch coalition government, led by the far-right PVV party under Geert Wilders, is ideologically very close to Hungary’s ruling party, Fidesz. Now they want to work together to pressure the European Commission and the other EU members into taking a hard line on asylum policy.
The declared aim of the Dutch minister for asylum, the PVV’s Marjolein Faber, is to establish the “toughest migration policy ever” in the Netherlands. In order to do this, she wants to declare a “state of emergency” that would allow her to act without the approval of the Dutch parliament, should the need arise. For its part, the Hungarian government has been issuing and relying on emergency decrees since the start of the COVID-19 crisis.
EU Council president Hungary is torpedoing EU law
Hungary also currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council. In this role, its minister for European affairs, Boka, ought to be advocating on behalf of the EU’s joint asylum policy. Reforms to this policy were finally approved in April, by the European Parliament and a majority of member-state governments.
Instead, Boka has chosen to be uncompromising in his representation of Hungarian national interests. A press release issued by the government in Budapest says Hungary feels encouraged by the Dutch move, and considers its stance to be validated by the debate in Europe as a whole.
Hungary rejects the EU asylum pact, which has now become law, and is determined not to implement it, although it is obliged to do so. The Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, has expressed satisfaction that, on Monday, Germany started controlling all its borders with a view to catching people who try to enter the country illegally.
Exceptions are hard to make
“The Dutch government’s demand for an opt-out from European migration policy is a paper tiger,” according to the German MEP Birgit Sippel of the Social Democrats.
“Because a non-participation clause would have to be included in European treaties, and these can only be amended by unanimous agreement. I very much doubt that other member states would approve a unilateral move of this kind by the Netherlands,” said Sippel, who helped negotiate the EU migration pact.
The same, of course, applies to Hungary. The EU has never introduced a retroactive exemption or opt-out for a specific policy area. The existing opt-outs were either agreed on when the relevant EU treaties were adopted, or at the time of the member state’s accession.
Denmark, for example, is partially exempt from domestic policy, migration policy, and Schengen zone border control regulations. Ireland does not apply Schengen rules in full because of its close relationship with the United Kingdom. Poland was granted an exemption from the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, because Warsaw feared that adopting the charter would force it to legalize same-sex marriage.
Italy’s far-right prime minister Giorgia Meloni declared a state of emergency in her country some time ago, in response to the supposed migration crisis. She too is ideologically aligned with Wilders in the Netherlands and Orban in Hungary, and may well be the next to demand to “opt out” of EU asylum laws.
