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Countries also started to send refugees back to non-safe third countries,
often without taking into real consideration the circumstances of the country ¬
their actions regularly going against leading case law, like the M.S.S. judgment
of the European Court of Human Rights, or the N.S. judgment of the EC].
Moreover, EU Member States send people back to countries like Afghanistan,
where their lives are obviously in danger, en masse. In Hungary, refugees were
detained in transit zones and some of them did not receive a proper meal for
days, including children with diabetes. In the meanwhile, Denmark seized
the property of refugees as a compensation for state services. All this was in
stark contrast with the rhetoric of open and tolerant societies.
Third, the future seems even shadier. If we check the agenda set by the New
Pact on migration and asylum promoted by the European Commission,’ we
find that it goes even further with securitisation, and while there are some good
points in it - like the protection of children - it does not give answers to some
ofthe crucial problems, like the unbearable situation in certain countries, the
necessary answers to biopolitics, institutionalised discrimination in Europe,
or cultural conflicts between citizens and arrivals. Furthermore, it aims to
continue the ‘outsourcing’ of migration control to proxy countries outside
Europe, so that most of the migration could be stopped there. But is this in
line with European demands and the demographic trends mentioned before?
And what about general moral requirements of the Enlightenment tradition?
The lack of human rights guarantees in many countries of Northern Africa and
Turkey are very serious concerns here, which are not always taken seriously
by European decision-makers.
c. Leitkultur and social conflicts
In the disputes around openness and closedness in European societies, there
was one debate that received less attention in the press: notably that about
Leitkultur, i.e. a domestic culture in European countries that could serve for
the integration of migrants (Manz 2004). This is interesting because there
is a high chance that there will be cultural conflicts if we mix people with
different backgrounds, especially if arrivals come from societies which do
not have a democratic public culture. How we solve these conflicts could be
the key to a successful Europe.
As Francis Fukuyama wrote in his book Identity,
[iJn the early 2000s, a German academic of Syrian origin named Bassam Tibi
proposed Leitkultur, “leading culture”, as the basis for German national identity.
Leitkultur was defined in liberal Enlightenment terms as belief in equality and
5 See more at https://ec.europa.eu/info/strategy/priorities-2019-2024/promoting-our¬
european-way-life/new-pact-migration-and-asylum_en