Entries with Categories Global Affairs .
WORKING PAPER / N. Moreno, A. Puigrefagut, I. Yárnoz
ABSTRACT
The fundamental characteristic of the external action of the European Union (EU) in recent years has been the use of the so-called soft power. This soft power has made the Union a key actor for the development of a large part of the world's regions. The last decades the EU has participated in a considerable amount of projects in the economic, cultural and political fields in order to fulfil the article 2 of its founding Treaty and thus promote their values and interests and contribute to peace, security and sustainable development of the globe through solidarity and respect for all peoples. Nevertheless, EU's interventions in different regions of the world have not been free of objections that have placed in the spotlight a possible direct attack by the Union to the external States' national sovereignties, thus creating a principle of neo-colonialism by the EU.
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![Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and President Donald Trump during a meeting in Washington in 2017 [White House].](/documents/10174/16849987/women-arabia-saudi-blog.jpg "Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and President Donald Trump during a meeting in Washington in 2017 [White House].")
▲Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and President Donald Trump during a meeting in Washington in 2017 [White House].
ANALYSIS / Naomi Moreno
Saudi Arabia used to be the only country in the world that banned women from driving. This ban was one of the things that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) was best known for to outsiders not otherwise familiar with the country's domestic politics, and has thus been a casus belli for activists demanding reforms in the kingdom. Last month, Saudi Arabia started issuing the first driver's licenses to women, putting into effect some of the changes promised by the infamous Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) in his bid to modernize Saudi Arabian politics. The end of the ban further signals the beginning of a move to expand the rights of women in KSA, and builds on piecemeal developments that took place in the realm of women's rights in the kingdom prior to MBS' entrance to the political scene.
Thus, since 2012, Saudi Arabian women have been able to do sports as well as participate in the Olympic Games; in the 2016 Olympics, four Saudi women were allowed to travel to Rio de Janeiro to compete. Moreover, within the political realm, King Abdullah swore in the first 30 women to the shura council - Saudi Arabia's consultative council - in February 2013, and in the kingdom's 2015 municipal elections, women were able to vote and run for office for the first time. Finally, and highlighting the fact that economic dynamics have similarly played a role in driving progression in the kingdom, the Saudi stock exchange named the first female chairperson in its history - a 39-year-old Saudi woman named Sarah Al Suhaimi - last February.
Further, although KSA may be known to be one of the "worst countries to be a woman", the country has experienced a B in the last 5 years and the abovementioned advances in women's rights, to name some, constitute a positive development. However, the most visible reforms have arguably been the work of MBS. The somewhat rash and unprecedented decision to end the ban on driving coincided with MBS' crackdown on ultra-conservative, Wahhabi clerics and the placing of several of the kingdom's richest and most influential men under house arrest, under the pretext of challenging corruption. In addition, under his leadership, the oil-rich kingdom is undergoing economic reforms to reduce the country's dependency on oil, in a bid to modernize the country's economy.
Nonetheless, despite the above mentioned reforms being classified by some as unprecedented, progressive leaps that are putting an end to oppression through challenging underlying ultra-conservatism traditions (as well as those that espouse them), a measure of distrust has arisen among Saudis and outsiders with regards the motivations underlying the as-of-yet seemingly limited reforms that have been introduced. While some perceive the crown prince's actions to be a genuine move towards reforming Saudi society, several indicators point to the possibility that MBS might have more practical reasons that are only tangentially related to progression for progression's sake. As the thinking goes, such decrees may have less to do with genuine reform, and more to do with improving an international image to deflect from some of the kingdom's more controversial practices, both at home and abroad. A number of factors drive this public skepticism.
Reasons for scepticism
The first relates to the fact that KSA is a country where an ultraconservative form of shari'a or Islamic law continues to constitute the primary legal framework. This legal framework is based on the Qur'an and Hadith, within which the public and many private aspects of everyday life are regulated. Unlike in other Muslim majority countries, where only selective elements of the shari'a are adopted, Wahhabism - which is identified by the Court of Strasbourg as a main source of terrorism - has necessitated the strict adherence to a fundamentalist interpretation of shari'a, one that draws from the stricter and more literal Hanbali school of jurisprudence. As such, music and the arts have been strictly controlled and censored. In addition, although the religious police (more commonly known as the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice) have had their authority curbed to a certain degree, they are still given the authority to enforce Islamic norms of conduct in public by observing suspects and forwarding their findings to the police.
In the past few years, the KSA has been pushing for a more national Wahhabism, one that is more modern in its outlook and suitable for the kingdom's image. Nevertheless, the Wahhabi clergy has been close to the Al Saud dynasty since the mid-18th century, offering it Islamic legitimacy in return for control over parts of the state, and a lavish religious infrastructure of mosques and universities. Therefore, Saudi clerics are pushing back significantly against democratization efforts. As a result, the continuing prevalence of a shari'a system of law raises questions about the ability of the kingdom to seriously democratize and reform to become moderate.
Secondly, and from a domestic point of view, Saudi Arabia is experiencing disharmony. Saudi citizens are not willing to live in a country where any political opposition is quelled by force, and punishments for crimes such as blasphemy, sorcery, and apostasy are gruesome and carried out publicly. This internal issue has thus embodied an identity crisis provoked mainly by the 2003 Iraq war, and reinforced by the events of the Arab Spring. Disillusionment, unemployment, religious and tribal splits, as well as human rights abuses and corruption among an ageing leadership have been among the main grievances of the Saudi people who are no longer as tolerant of oppression.
In an attempt to prevent the spill over of the Arab Spring fervor into the Kingdom, the government spent $130 billion in an attempt to offset domestic unrest. Nonetheless, these grants failed to satisfy the nearly 60 percent of the population under the age of twenty-one, which refused to settle. In fact, in 2016 protests broke out in Qatif, a city in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich, eastern provinces, which prompted Saudis to deploy additional security units to the region. In addition, in September of last year, Saudi authorities, arguing a battle against corruption and a crack down on extremism, arrested dozens of people, including prominent clerics. According to a veteran Saudi journalist, this was an absurd action as "there was nothing that called for such arrests". He argued that several among those arrested were not members of any political organization, but rather individuals with dissenting viewpoints to those held by the ruling family.
Among those arrested was Sheikh Salman al-Awdah, an influential cleric known for agitating for political change and for being a pro-Shari'a activist. Awdah's arrest, while potentially disguised as part of the kingdom's attempts to curb the influence of religious hardliners, is perhaps better understood in the context of the Qatar crisis. Thus, when KSA, with the support of a handful of other countries in the region, initiated a blockade of the small Gulf peninsula in June of last year, Awdah welcomed a report on his Twitter account suggesting that the then three-month-old row between Qatar and four Arab countries led by Saudi Arabia may be resolved. The ensuing arrest of the Sheikh seems to confirm a suspicion that it was potentially related to his favoring the renormalization of relations with Qatar, as opposed to it being related to MBS' campaign to moderate Islam in the kingdom.
A third factor that calls into question the sincerity of the modernization campaign is economic. Although Saudi Arabia became a very wealthy country following the discovery of oil in the region, massive inequality between the various classes has grown since, as these resources remain to be controlled by a select few. As a result, nearly one fifth of the population continues to live in poverty, especially in the predominantly Shi'a South where, ironically, much of the oil reservoirs are located. In these areas, sewage runs in the streets, and only crumbs are spent to alleviate the plight of the poor. Further, youth opportunities in Saudi Arabia are few, which leaves much to be desire, and translates into occasional unrest. Thus, the lack of possibilities has led many young men to join various terrorist organizations in search of a new life.
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Statement by MBS in a conference organized in Riyadh in October 2017 [KSA]. |
![Statement by MBS in a conference organized in Riyadh in October 2017 [KSA].](/documents/10174/16849987/women-arabia-saudi-blog-2.jpg "Statement by MBS in a conference organized in Riyadh in October 2017 [KSA].")
Vision 2030 and international image
In the context of the Saudi Vision 2030, the oil rich country is aiming to wean itself of its dependence on the natural resource which, despite its wealth generation capacity, has also been one of the main causes of the country's economic problems. KSA is facing an existential crisis that has led to a re-think of its long-standing practice of selling oil via fixed contracts. This is why Vision 2030 is so important. Seeking to regain better control over its economic and financial destiny, the kingdom has designed an ambitious economic restructuring plan, spearheaded by MBS. Vision 2030 constitutes a reform program that aims to upgrade the country's financial status by diversifying its economy in a world of low oil prices. Saudi Arabia thus needs overseas firms' investments, most notably in non-oil sectors, in order to develop this state-of-the-art approach. This being said, Vision 2030 inevitably implies reforms on simultaneous fronts that go beyond economic affairs. The action plan has come in at a time when the kingdom is not only dealing with oil earnings and lowering its reserves, but also expanding its regional role. As a result, becoming a more democratic country could attract foreign wealth to a country that has traditionally been viewed in a negative light due to its repressive human rights record.
This being said, Saudi Arabia also has a lot to do regarding its foreign policy in order to improve its international image. Despite this, the Saudi petition to push the US into a war with Iran has not ceased during recent years. Religious confrontation between the Sunni Saudi autocracy and Iran's Shi'a theocracy has characterized the geopolitical tensions that have existed in the region for decades. Riyadh has tried to circumvent criticism of its military intervention in the Yemen through capitalizing on the Trump administration's hostility towards Iran, and involving the US in its campaign; thus granting it a degree of legitimacy as an international alliance against the Houthis. Recently, MBS stated that Trump was the "best person at the right time" to confront Iran. Conveniently enough, Trump and the Republicans are now in charge of US' foreign affairs. Whereas the Obama administration, in its final months, suspended the sale of precision-guided missiles to Saudi Arabia, the Trump administration has moved to reverse this in the context of the Yemeni conflict. In addition, in May of this year, just a month after MBS visited Washington in a meeting which included discussions regarding the Iran accords, the kingdom has heaped praise on president Trump following his decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
All things considered, 2018 may go down in history as the irreversible end of the absolute archaic Saudi monarchy. This implosion was necessitated by events, such as those previously mentioned, that Saudi rulers could no longer control or avoid. Hitherto, MBS seems to be fulfilling his father's wishes. He has hand-picked dutiful and like-minded princes and appointed them to powerful positions. As a result, MBS' actions suggest that the kingdom is turning over a new page in which a new generation of princes and technocrats will lead the breakthrough to a more moderate and democratic Saudi Arabia.
New awareness
However, although MBS has declared that the KSA is moving towards changing existing guardianship laws, due to cultural differences among Saudi families, to date, women still need power of attorney from a male relative to acquire a car, and risk imprisonment should they disobey male guardians. In addition, this past month, at least 12 prominent women's rights activists who campaigned for women's driving rights just before the country lifted the ban were arrested. Although the lifting of the ban is now effective, 9 of these activists remain behind bars and are facing serious charges and long jail sentences. As such, women continue to face significant challenges in realizing basic rights, despite the positive average endorsement that MBS' lifting of the driving ban has received.
Although Saudi Arabia is making an effort in order to satisfy the public eye, it is with some degree of scepticism that one should approach the country's motivations. Taking into account Saudi Arabia's current state of affairs, these events suggest that the women's driving decree was an effort in order to improve the country's external image as well as an effort to deflect attention from a host of problematic internal and external affairs, such as the proxy warfare in the region, the arrest of dissidents and clerics this past September, and the Qatari diplomatic crisis, which recently "celebrated" its first anniversary. Allowing women to drive is a relatively trivial sacrifice for the kingdom to make and has triggered sufficient positive reverberations globally. Such baby steps are positive, and should be encouraged, yet overlook the fact that they only represent the tip of the iceberg.
As it stands, the lifting of the driving ban does not translate into a concrete shift in the prevailing legal and cultural mindsets that initially opposed it. Rather, it is an indirect approach to strengthen Saudi's power in economic and political terms. Yet, although women in Saudi Arabia may feel doubtful about the government's intentions, time remains to be their best ally. After decades of an ultraconservative approach to handling their rights, the country has reached awareness that it can no longer sustain its continued oppression of women; and this for economic reasons, but also as a result of global pressures that affect the success of the country's foreign policies which, by extension, also negatively impact on its interests.
The silver lining for Saudi woman is that, even if the issue of women's rights is being leveraged to secure the larger interests of the kingdom, it continues to represent a slow and steady progression to a future in which women may be granted more freedoms. The downside is that, so long as these rights are not grafted into a broader legal framework that secures them beyond the rule of a single individual - like MBS - women's rights (and human rights in general) will continue to be the temporary product of individual whim. Without an overhaul of the shari'a system that perpetuates regressive attitudes towards women, the best that can be hoped for is the continuation of internal and external pressures that coerce the Saudi leadership into exacting further reforms in the meantime. As with all things, time will tell.
DOC. DE work / A. Palacios, M. Lamela, M. Biera[English version].
SUMMARY
The European Union (EU) has been particularly damaged internally by disinformation campaigns that have questioned its legislation and its very values. The various disinformation operations and the inability of the EU institutions to communicate have generated a sense of alarm in Brussels. Barely a year before the European Parliament elections, Europe has concentrated many of its efforts on tackling the disinformation challenge, generating new strategies and work groups such as the Stratcom Task Force or the European Commission's group of experts.
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After centuries of Caribbean orientation, the enclave accentuates its relationship with its neighbors on the mainland.
Two years ago, Suriname and Guyana became part of the South American soccer federation, leaving the North, Central American and Caribbean federation to which they belonged. It is a clear symbol of the change in geographical orientation that is taking place in this northeastern corner of South America, which, as in the case of soccer, sees the potential for a closer relationship with its southern neighbors.
article / Alba Redondo
As vestiges of the colonial past of the great European naval powers of the 17th century -England, Holland and France- we find in the northeast of South America the three Guianas: Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. In addition to the natural barriers that isolate the region and hinder its connection with the rest of the South American continent - it has a closer relationship with the Caribbean, although its Atlantic coast is outside that sea - there are also social, cultural and idiomatic barriers that complicate its integration into the continent.
Located in the northeast of the South American continent, the region was called Guayana or "land of many waters" by its original inhabitants, the Arawaks. The area is bordered to the west by Venezuela and to the south by Brazil, countries that also include lands that are part of the Guiana natural region. The humid terrain and coastline, dense with mangrove swamps and marshes, combine with the tropical climate of the interior, which is characterized by virgin forests, high plateaus and large mountain ranges such as the Guiana Shield. Its population, ranging from indigenous to European descendants, is located in the coastal area and in the river valleys.
The Guianas are spoken of jointly not only because they form a common territory for the natives, but also because they were left out of the continental distribution made by the two great empires of the Iberian Peninsula. Being a territory not easily accessible from the rest of the continent, the lack of Spanish and Portuguese presence led other European powers of the time to seek to set foot there, in exploration campaigns carried out during the seventeenth century. British Guiana gained independence in 1970 and Dutch Guiana in 1975. French Guiana remains a department and an overseas region of France and, consequently, an outermost territory of the European Union in South America.
The three unknown
To the west of the region lies Guyana, officially known as the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. The country has a population of about 773,000 inhabitants, mostly located in Georgetown, its capital. Its official language is English, a bequest of its colonial past. The Guyanese political-social reality is marked by the conflictive coexistence between the two great ethnic groups: the Afro-Guyanese and the Indo-Guyanese. Its internal politics is characterized by the bipartisanship between the PNC (People's National Congress) formed by the Afro-descendants concentrated in the urban centers; and the PPP (People Progressive Party), with greater influence in the rural zone, constituted by descendants of immigrants from India arrived during the British Empire and who work in the sugar plantations.
Despite a recent increase in foreign investment, Guyana is the poorest country with the highest crime, violence and suicide rates on the continent. In addition, its international image is conditioned by its perception as a reference area for international cocaine distribution and its high rate of corruption. However, the country's future points to its entry into the world's major oil powers after finding one of the largest oil and gas fields discovered in our decade.
Like Guyana, the political life of the Republic of Suriname is subject to a great ethno-cultural mosaic. The former Dutch colony, with its capital in Paramaribo, is the smallest and least populated country in South America, with only 163,821 inhabitants. After its independence in 1975, more than one third of the population emigrated to the metropolis (the Netherlands). This produced a major structural crisis due to the lack of human capital in the country. Suriname is made up of descendants from almost all continents: Africans, Indians, Chinese and Javanese, aborigines and Europeans. Its domestic policy is marked by the influence of Desiré Bouterse and by the democratic aspirations of the society. Regarding its foreign policy, Suriname is committed to a better control of its resource exports, mainly aluminum, and to a progressive integration in the regional and international sphere, in most cases, together with its neighboring country, Guyana.
Unlike the other two Guianas, French Guiana is not an independent country, but an overseas region of France, which is located more than 7,000 km from France. The capital of this territory is Cayenne. For a long time it was used by France as a penal colony. It has the highest homicide rate in the entire French-speaking territory and is known for its high crime rate. As a Gallic department , it is part of the European Union and home to the French Guiana Space Center, housing one of Europe's main satellite launching stations in Kourou. French Guiana is facing growing unemployment, lack of resources for Education and dissatisfaction among its population which has led to numerous protests.
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Change of orientation
Due to the strong historical relationship with their respective metropolises and their late independence, there has traditionally been an important barrier between the Guianas and South America. Geographically, they are cornered on the northern coast of South America, with difficulty in developing contacts to the south, due to the orography of the Guiana massif and the Amazon rainforest. But there have also been cultural and linguistic reasons that contributed to a rapprochement between this region and the western Caribbean, where England, Holland and France had -and still have in some cases- island possessions.
However, after a long period of relative isolation, with hardly any relations with their southern neighbors, the republics of Suriname and Guyana have begun to join the dynamics of economic and political integration in South America.
Traditionally, the two States have had a closer relationship with the Caribbean: both are full members of CARICOM, Georgetown being the headquarters of this community of Caribbean countries, and are part of the association of Caribbean States (ACS), with the peculiarity of the presence of French Guiana as a partner. In recent years, Suriname and Guyana have begun to look more towards the continent itself: they participated in the creation of Unasur and are observer countries of Mercosur. Symbolic of this change of orientation was the entry in 2016 of these two countries into Conmebol, the South American soccer federation, leaving the North, Central American and Caribbean federation to which they belonged.
This closer relationship with its continental neighbors and participation in the South American integration process should serve to resolve some pending border issues, such as the dispute between Venezuela and Guyana: Caracas has historically claimed the territory between its border and the Essequibo River, which flows through the middle of Guyana. However, as other Latin American territorial disputes are being resolved in international courts, the Essequibo dispute threatens to perpetuate itself for the time being.
ESSAY / Elena López-Dóriga
The European Union's aim is to promote democracy, unity, integration and cooperation between its members. However, in the last years it is not only dealing with economic crises in many countries, but also with a humanitarian one, due to the exponential number of migrants who run away from war or poverty situations.
When referring to the humanitarian crises the EU had to go through (and still has to) it is about the refugee migration coming mainly from Syria. Since 2011, the civil war in Syria killed more than 470,000 people, mostly civilians. Millions of people were displaced, and nearly five million Syrians fled, creating the biggest refugee crisis since the World War II. When the European Union leaders accorded in assembly to establish quotas to distribute the refugees that had arrived in Europe, many responses were manifested in respect. On the one hand, some Central and Eastern countries rejected the proposal, putting in evidence the philosophy of agreement and cooperation of the EU claiming the quotas were not fair. Dissatisfaction was also felt in Western Europe too with the United Kingdom's shock Brexit vote from the EU and Austria's near election of a far right-wing leader attributed in part to the convulsions that the migrant crisis stirred. On the other hand, several countries promised they were going to accept a certain number of refugees and turned out taking even less than half of what they promised. In this note it is going to be exposed the issue that occurred and the current situation, due to what happened threatened many aspects that revive tensions in the European Union nowadays.
The response of the EU leaders to the crisis
The greatest burden of receiving Syria's refugees fell on Syria's neighbors: Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. In 2015 the number of refugees raised up and their destination changed to Europe. The refugee camps in the neighbor countries were full, the conditions were not good at all and the conflict was not coming to an end as the refugees expected. Therefore, refugees decided to emigrate to countries such as Germany, Austria or Norway looking for a better life. It was not until refugees appeared in the streets of Europe that European leaders realised that they could no longer ignore the problem. Furthermore, flows of migrants and asylum seekers were used by terrorist organisations such as ISIS to infiltrate terrorists to European countries. Facing this humanitarian crisis, European Union ministers approved a plan on September 2015 to share the burden of relocating up to 120,000 people from the so called "Frontline States" of Greece, Italy and Hungary to elsewhere within the EU. The plan assigned each member state quotas: a number of people to receive based on its economic strength, population and unemployment. Nevertheless, the quotas were rejected by a group of Central European countries also known as the Visegrad Group, that share many interests and try to reach common agreements.
Why the Visegrad Group rejected the quotas
The Visegrad Group (also known as the Visegrad Four or simply V4) reflects the efforts of the countries of the Central European region to work together in many fields of common interest within the all-European integration. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia have shared cultural background, intellectual values and common roots in diverse religious traditions, which they wish to preserve and strengthen. After the disintegration of the Eastern Block, all the V4 countries aspired to become members of the European Union. They perceived their integration in the EU as another step forward in the process of overcoming artificial dividing lines in Europe through mutual support. Although they negotiated their accession separately, they all reached this aim in 2004 (1st May) when they became members of the EU.
The tensions between the Visegrad Group and the EU started in 2015, when the EU approved the quotas of relocation of the refugees only after the dissenting votes of the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia were overruled. In asking the court to annul the deal, Hungary and Slovakia argued at the Court of Justice that there were procedural mistakes, and that quotas were not a suitable response to the crisis. Besides, the politic leaders said the problem was not their making, and the policy exposed them to a risk of Islamist terrorism that represented a threat to their homogenous societies. Their case was supported by Polish right-wing government of the party Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) which came to power in 2015 and claimed that the quotes were not comprehensive.
Regarding Poland's rejection to the quotas, it should be taken into account that is a country of 38 million people and already home to an exponential number of Ukrainian immigrants. Most of them decided to emigrate after military conflict erupted in eastern Ukraine in 2014, when the currency value of the Ukrainian hryvnia plummeted and prices rose. This could be a reason why after having received all these immigration from Ukraine, the Polish government believed that they were not ready to take any more refugees, and in that case from a different culture. They also claimed that the relocation methods would only attract more waves of immigration to Europe.
The Slovak and Hungarian representatives at the EU court stressed that they found the Council of the EU's decision rather political, as it was not achieved unanimously, but only by a qualified majority. The Slovak delegation labelled this decision "inadequate and inefficient". Both the Slovak and Hungarian delegations pointed to the fact that the target the EU followed by asserting national quotas failed to address the core of the refugee crisis and could have been achieved in a different way, for example by better protecting the EU's external border or with a more efficient return policy in case of migrants who fail to meet the criteria for being granted asylum.
The Czech prime minister at that time, Bohuslav Sobotka, claimed the commission was "blindly insisting on pushing ahead with dysfunctional quotas which decreased citizens' trust in EU abilities and pushed back working and conceptual solutions to the migration crisis".
Moreover, there are other reasons that run deeper about why 'new Europe' (these recently integrated countries in the EU) resisted the quotas which should be taken into consideration. On the one hand, their just recovered sovereignty makes them especially resistant to delegating power. On the other, their years behind the iron curtain left them outside the cultural shifts taking place elsewhere in Europe, and with a legacy of social conservatism. Furthermore, one can observe a rise in skeptical attitudes towards immigration, as public opinion polls have shown.
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* As of September 2017. Own work based on this article |
The temporary solution: The Turkey Deal
The accomplishment of the quotas was to be expired in 2017, but because of those countries that rejected the quotas and the slow process of introducing the refugees in those countries that had accepted them, the EU reached a new and polemic solution, known as the Turkey Deal.
Turkey is a country that has had the aspiration of becoming a European Union member since many years, mainly to improve their democracy and to have better connections and relations with Western Europe. The EU needed a quick solution to the refugee crisis to limit the mass influx of irregular migrants entering in, so knowing that Turkey is Syria's neighbor country (where most refugees came from) and somehow could take even more refugees, the EU and Turkey made a deal on the 18th of March 2016. Following the signing of the EU-Turkey deal: those arriving in the Greek Islands would be returned to Turkey, and for each Syrian sent back from Greece to Turkey one Syrian could be sent from a Turkish camp to the EU. In exchange, the EU paid 3 billion euros to Turkey for the maintenance of the refugees, eased the EU visa restrictions for Turkish citizens and paid great lip-service to the idea of Turkey becoming a member state.
The Turkey Deal is another issue that should be analysed separately, since it has not been defended by many organisations which have labelled the deal as shameless. Instead, the current relationship between both sides, the EU and V4 is going to be analysed, as well as possible new solutions.
Current relationship between the UE and V4
In terms of actual relations, on the one hand critics of the Central European countries' stance over refugees claim that they are willing to accept the economic benefits of the EU, including access to the single market, but have shown a disregard for the humanitarian and political responsibilities. On the other hand, the Visegrad Four complains that Western European countries treat them like second-class members, meddling in domestic issues by Brussels and attempting to impose EU-wide solutions against their will, as typified by migrant quotas. One Visegrad minister told the Financial Times, "We don't like it when the policy is defined elsewhere and then we are told to implement it." From their point of view, Europe has lost its global role and has become a regional player. Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban said "the EU is unable to protect its own citizens, to protect its external borders and to keep the community together, as Britain has just left".
Mr Avramopolus, who is Greece's European commissioner, claimed that if no action was taken by them, the Commission would not hesitate to make use of its powers under the treaties and to open infringement procedures.
At this time, no official sanctions have been imposed to these countries yet. Despite of the threats from the EU for not taking them, Mariusz Blaszczak, Poland's former Interior minister, claimed that accepting migrants would have certainly been worse for the country for security reasons than facing EU action. Moreover, the new Poland's Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki proposes to implement programs of aid addressed to Lebanese and Jordanian entities on site, in view of the fact that Lebanon and Jordan had admitted a huge number of Syrian refugees, and to undertake further initiatives aimed at helping the refugees affected by war hostilities.
To sum up, facing this refugee crisis a fracture in the European Union between Western and Eastern members has shown up. Since the European Union has been expanding its boarders from west to east integrating new countries as member states, it should also take into account that this new member countries have had a different past (in the case of the Eastern countries, they were under the iron curtain) and nowadays, despite of the wish to collaborate all together, the different ideologies and the different priorities of each country make it difficult when it comes to reach an agreement. Therefore, while old Europe expects new Europe to accept its responsibilities, along with the financial and security benefits of the EU, this is going to take time. As a matter of fact, it is understandable that the EU Commission wants to sanction the countries that rejected the quotas, but the majority of the countries that did accept to relocate the refugees in the end have not even accepted half of what they promised, and apparently they find themselves under no threats of sanction. Moreover, the latest news coming from Austria since December 2017 claim that the country has bluntly told the EU that it does not want to accept any more refugees, arguing that it has already taken in enough. Therefore, it joins the Visegrad Four countries to refuse the entrance of more refugees.
In conclusion, the future of Europe and a solution to this problem is not known yet, but what is clear is that there is a breach between the Western and Central-Eastern countries of the EU, so an efficient and fair solution which is implemented in common agreement will expect a long time to come yet.
Bibliography:
J. Juncker (2015). A call for Collective Courage. 2018, from European Commission Website.
EC (2018). Asylum statistics. 2018, from European Commission Website.
International Visegrad Fund (2006). Official Statements and communiqués. 2018, from Visegrad Group Website.
Jacopo Barigazzi (2017). Brussels takes on Visegrad Group over refugees. 2018, from POLITICO Website.
Zuzana Stevulova (2017). "Visegrad Four and refugees. 2018, from Confrontations Europe (European Think Tank) Website.
Nicole Gnesotto (2015). Refugees are an internal manifestation of an unresolved external crisis. 2018, from Confrontations Europe (European Think Tank) Website.
Trump has maintained several of the measures passed by Obama, but has conditioned their implementation
Donald Trump has not Closed the embassy opened by Barack Obama in Havana and has kept to the letter of the rules allowing only certain travel by Americans to the island. However, his imposition of not establishing commercial or financial relations with companies controlled by the Cuban military-police apparatus has affected the trade Issue . But it has been above all his anti-Castro rhetoric that has returned the relationship almost to the Cold War.
![Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, at the baseball game they attended during the U.S. president's 2016 visit to Cuba [Pete Souza/White House].](/documents/10174/16849987/eeuu-cuba-blog.jpg "Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, at the baseball game they attended during the U.S. president's 2016 visit to Cuba [Pete Souza/White House].")
▲Barack Obama and Raúl Castro, at the baseball game they attended during the U.S. president's 2016 visit to Cuba [Pete Souza/White House].
article / Valeria Vásquez
For more than half a century, relations between the United States and Cuba were marked by political tensions. The last years of Barack Obama's presidency marked a significant change with the historic reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries and the approval of certain measures of U.S. openness toward Cuba. The White House then hoped that the climate of growing cooperation would boost the modest economic reforms that Havana had begun to implement earlier and that all this would eventually bring political transformations to the island.
The Cuban government's lack of concessions in subject of freedoms and human rights, however, was used by Donald Trump to reverse, upon his arrival to power, several of the measures approved by his predecessor, although it has been above all his anti-Castro rhetoric that has created a new hostile environment between Washington and Havana.
Obama era: détente
In his second term, Barack Obama began secret negotiations with Cuba that culminated in the advertisement in December 2014 of an agreement for the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The respective embassies were reopened in July 2015, thus overcoming an anomaly dating back to 1961, when the Eisenhower Administration decided to break relations with the Antillean neighbor in view of the communist orientation of the Cuban Revolution. In March 2016, Obama became the first U.S. president to visit Cuba in 88 years.
Beyond the diplomatic sphere, Obama also sought an economic opening towards the island. Since lifting the decades-old US embargo required the approval of congress, where he faced a Republican majority, Obama introduced certain liberalizing measures by means of presidential decrees. Thus, he eased travel restrictions (he hardly changed the letter of the law, but did relax his internship) and authorized raising the Issue of purchases that Americans could make in Cuba.
For Obama, the economic embargo was a failed policy, as it had not achieved its purpose of ending the Cuban dictatorship and, consequently, had prolonged it. For this reason, he was in favor of a change of strategy, in the hope that the normalization of relations - diplomatic and, progressively, economic - would help to improve Cuba's social status and contribute, in the medium or long term, to the change that the economic embargo had failed to bring about. According to Obama, the embargo had had a negative impact, as issues such as the limitation of tourism or the lack of foreign direct investment had affected the Cuban people more than the Castro nomenklatura.
A new economic relationship
Faced with the impossibility of lifting the economic embargo on Cuba, Obama opted for presidential decrees that opened up trade relations between the two countries. Several measures were aimed at facilitating better access to the Internet for Cubans, which should help to promote democratizing demands in the country. Thus, Washington authorized U.S. telecommunications companies to establish business in Cuba.
In the financial field, the United States allowed its banks to open accounts in Cuba, which facilitated transactions. In addition, Cuban citizens residing on the island could receive payments in the U.S. and send them back to their country.
Another of the measures adopted was the lifting of some of the travel restrictions. As required by U.S. legislation, Obama maintained the restriction that Americans can only travel to Cuba under various circumstances, all linked to certain missions: academic, humanitarian, religious support trips... Although purely tourist trips were still excluded, the lack of control that the U.S. authorities deliberately stopped applying meant a considerable opening of the hand.
In addition to authorizing banking transactions related to such travel, to cater to the anticipated increase in tourists it was announced that several U.S. carriers such as JetBlue and American Airlines had received approval to fly to Cuba. For the first time in 50 years, in late November 2016 a U.S. commercial aircraft landed in Havana.
The U.S. president also eliminated the expense limit for U.S. visitors in the purchase of staff products (particularly cigars and rum). He also promoted partnership in medical research and approved the importation of medicines produced in Cuba.
In addition, Obama repealed the "wet foot, dry foot" policy, whereby Cubans arriving on U.S. soil were automatically granted political asylum, while only those intercepted by Cuba at sea were returned to the island.
Trump's review
Since his election campaign, Donald Trump showed clear signals about the direction his relations with Cuba would take if he became president. Trump announced that he would reverse the opening towards Cuba carried out by Obama, and as soon as he arrived at the White House he began to strengthen Washington's anti-Castro speech . The new president said he was willing to negotiate a "better agreement" with the island, but on the condition that the Cuban government showed concrete progress towards the democratization of the country and respect for human rights. Trump raised the prospect of free elections and the release of political prisoners, knowing that the Cuban regime would not accede to these requests. In the absence of a response from Havana, Trump insisted on his previous proposals: maintenance of the embargo (which in any case the Republican majority in congress is not willing to lift) and reversal of some of Obama' s decisions.
In reality, Trump has formally maintained several of his predecessor' s measures, although the ban on doing business with companies controlled by the Revolutionary Armed Forces (FAR), which dominate a good part of Cuban economic life, and the respect for the letter in travel restrictions have reduced the contact between the US and Cuba that had begun to occur at the end of the Obama era.
Trump has ratified the repeal of the "wet foot, dry foot" policy decided by Obama and has maintained the diplomatic relations reestablished by Obama (although he has paralyzed the appointment of an ambassador). It has also respected the timid commercial and financial opening operated by the Democratic president, but as long as the economic transactions do not take place with companies linked to the Cuban army, intelligence and security services. In this regard, on November 8, 2017, the Treasurydepartment published a list of companies in these sectors with which no U.S. contact subject is allowed.
In terms of travel, the restricted assumptions for American travel to the island are maintained, but in contrast to the blind eye adopted by the Obama Administration, the Trump Administration requires that Americans who want to go to Cuba must do so on tours conducted by American companies, accompanied by a representative of the group sponsor and with the obligation to communicate the details of their activities. Treasury rules and regulations require that stays be in private hostels (casas particulares), meals in restaurants run by individuals (paladares) and shopping in stores run by citizens (cuentapropistas), with the purpose of "channeling funds" away from the Cuban army and weakening communist policy.
Reduced tourist expectations led already at the end of 2017 to several US airlines having cancelled all their flights to the Caribbean island. Cuban Economics had counted on a large increase in U.S. tourists and yet now had to face, without higher revenues, the serious problem of falling shipments of cheap oil from Venezuela.
Future of diplomatic relations
The greatest tension between Washington and Havana, however, has not been in the commercial or economic sphere, but in the diplomatic sphere. Following a series of apparent "sonic attacks" on U.S. diplomats in Cuba, the United States withdrew a large part of its staff in Cuba and expelled 15 diplomats from the Cuban embassy in Washington. In addition, the State department issued a travel advisory against travel to the island. Although the origin of these alleged attacks, which the Cuban authorities deny having carried out, has not been clarified, it could be the accidental side effect of an espionage attempt, which would have eventually caused brain damage to the persons being monitored.
The future of relations between the two countries will depend on the direction taken by Trump's policies and the pace of reforms that the new Cuban president may establish. Given that not many changes are foreseen in Miguel Díaz-Canel's management , at least as long as Raúl Castro lives, Havana's immobility in the political and economic fields will probably continue to run up against Trump's anti-revolutionary rhetoric.
Central America's Northern Triangle migrants look to the U.S., Nicaragua's to Costa Rica
While migrants from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras continue to try to reach the United States, those from Nicaragua have preferred to travel to Costa Rica in recent years. The restrictions put in place by the Trump Administration and the deterioration of the Costa Rican economic boom are reducing the flows, but this migratory divide in Central America remains for the time being.
▲Belize-Mexico border crossing [Marrovi/CC].
article / Celia Olivar Gil
When comparing the Degree of development of Central American countries, the different human flows operating in the region are well understood. The United States is the great migratory magnet, but Costa Rica is also to some extent a pole of attraction, obviously to a lesser Degree Thus, the five Central American countries with the highest poverty rates -Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Belize- share their migratory orientation: the first four maintain important flows to the United States, while in recent years Nicaragua has opted more for Costa Rica, given its proximity.
Migration from the Northern Triangle to the U.S.
Nearly 500,000 people try every year to cross Mexico's southern border with the goal of reaching the United States. Most of them come from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras, the Central American region known as the Northern Triangle, which is currently one of the most violent in the world. The reasons that lead this large issue of citizens from the Northern Triangle to migrate, many illegally, are varied:
On the one hand, there are reasons that could be described as structural: the porousness of the border, the complexity and high costs of regularization processes for migration, the lack of commitment by employers to regularize migrant workers, and the insufficient capacity of governments to establish migration laws.
There are also clear economic reasons: Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador have a high poverty rate, at 67.7%, 74.3% and 41.6%, respectively, of their inhabitants. Difficulties in budgetary income and pronounced social inequality mean that public services, such as Education and healthcare, are poorly presentation to a large part of the population.
Perhaps the most compelling reason is the lack of security. Many of those leaving these three countries cite insecurity and violence as the main reason for their departure. The level of criminal violence in the Northern Triangle reaches levels similar to those of an armed conflict. In El Salvador, a total of 6,650 intentional homicides were registered in 2015; in Honduras, 8,035, and in Guatemala, 4,778.
All these reasons push Guatemalans, Salvadorans and Hondurans to migrate to the United States, who use three main routes to cross Mexico on their journey north: the one that crosses the country diagonally until reaching the Tijuana area , the one that goes through central Mexico to Ciudad Juarez and the one that seeks to enter the US through the Rio Bravo valley. Along these routes, migrants face many risks, such as falling victim to criminal organizations and suffering all subject of abuses (kidnapping, torture, rape, robbery, extortion...), which can not only cause immediate physical injuries and trauma, but can also leave serious long-term consequences.
Despite all these difficulties, citizens of the Northern Triangle continue to choose the United States as their migration destination. This is mainly due to the attraction of the economic potential of a country like the USA, in plenary session of the Executive Council employment status ; to its relative geographic proximity (it is possible to arrive by land crossing only one or two countries), and to the human relations created since the 1980s, when the USA began to be a goal for those fleeing the civil wars of a politically unstable Central America with economic difficulties, which created a migratory tradition, consolidated by family connections and the protection offered to the newcomers by the already established nationals. During this period, the Central American population in the U.S. tripled. Today, 82.9% of Central American immigrants in the U.S. live in the United States.
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The American immigration 'watershed' [with ABC's authorization]. |
Migration from Nicaragua to Costa Rica
If emigration from northern Central America has been directed towards the United States, emigration from southern Central America has had more destinations. If Hondurans have looked north, in recent years their Nicaraguan neighbors have looked a little more to the south. The Coco River, which divides Honduras and Nicaragua, has become a sort of migratory'watershed'.
There are certainly more Nicaraguans officially residing in the U.S. (over 400,000) than in Costa Rica (close to 300,000), but in recent years the issue new residents has increased more in Costa Rican territory. In the last decade, agreement to an OAS report (pages 159 and 188), the U.S. has granted permanent residency program to average of 3,500 Nicaraguans each year, while Costa Rica has granted an average of 5,000, reaching a record 14,779 in 2013. Moreover, the proportional weight of Nicaraguan migration in Costa Rica, a country of 4.9 million people, is large: in 2016, some 440,000 Nicaraguans entered the neighboring country, and as many exits were recorded, indicating significant cross-border mobility and suggesting that many workers return temporarily to Nicaragua to circumvent immigration requirements .
Costa Rica is seen in certain aspects in Latin America as Switzerland in Europe, that is, as an institutionally solid, politically stable and economically favorable country. This means that the emigration of Costa Ricans is not extreme and that people come from other places, so that Costa Rica is the country with the highest net migration in Latin America, with 9% of the Costa Rican population of foreign origin.
Since its independence in the 1820s, Costa Rica has remained one of the Central American countries with the least amount of serious conflicts. For this reason, during the 1970s and 1980s it was a refuge for many Nicaraguans fleeing the Somoza dictatorship and the Sandinista revolution. Now, however, they do not emigrate for security reasons, since Nicaragua is one of the least violent countries in Latin America, even below Costa Rica's figures. This migratory flow is due to economic reasons: Costa Rica's greater development is reflected in the poverty rate, which is 18.6%, compared to Nicaragua's 58.3%; in fact, Nicaragua is the poorest country in the Americas after Haiti.
Likewise, Nicaraguans have a special preference for choosing Costa Rica as a destination because of its geographic proximity, which allows them to move frequently between the two countries and to maintain a certain degree of family coexistence; the use of the same language, and other cultural similarities.
[Omar Jaén Suárez, 500 años de la cuenca del Pacífico. Towards a global history. Ediciones Doce Calles, Aranjuez 2016, 637 pages]
review / Emili J. Blasco
In just thirty years, between Columbus' arrival in America in 1492 and Elcano's return to Cadiz after his round-the-world voyage in 1522, Spain added to its domain not only a new continent, but also a new ocean. We all know about Spain's Atlantic dimension, but we often disregard its peaceful dimension. During the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the Pacific Ocean was primarily under Spanish dominion. Spain was the European power present for the longest time and with the greatest weight in the entire basin of what began to be called the South Sea. Spain was the first navy that regularly patrolled its waters - the Armada del Sur, based in El Callao, Peru - and Spain was the first trade route that periodically crossed it from side to side - the Manila galleon, between the Philippines and Mexico.
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In "500 years of the Pacific Basin. Toward a global history", Panamanian diplomat and historian Omar Jaén Suárez does not limit himself to documenting that Spanish and then Hispanic presence in a vast space -one third of the Earth's sphere and half of its waters- whose eastern margin is the coast of Spanish America. As the degree scroll indicates, his is a global history. But approaching the last half millennium means starting from the fact of the finding of the Pacific by the Spaniards and that determines the approach of the narration.
If Anglo-Saxon historiography would have perhaps used another prism, this book emphasizes the development of the entire Pacific account from the arrival of the first Europeans, with Nuñez de Balboa at the head. Without forgetting the colonizing actions of other powers, the author details aspects that we Spaniards do forget, such as the permanent base that Spain had in Formosa (today Taiwan), the Crown's attempts to keep Tahiti or the voyages through Alaska in search of a sea passage to the north of America, which had as a logistic point the island of Quadra and Vancouver, the great Canadian city today known only by the second part of that name (in fact, Spain neglected to populate Oregon, more interested in the Philippines and trade with the Moluccas): quite a pioneering "turn to Asia").
Being from Panama gives Omar Jaén, who has also lived in Spain, a special sensitivity for his subject of study. The Panamanian isthmus has always been the key to the South Sea for the Old World; with the construction of the canal, Panama is also a transit point between East and West.
The careful edition of this work adds an indisputable value. Almost eight hundred maps, graphs, engravings and photographs make it especially visual. The quantity of illustrations, many in full color, and the good weight of the paper make the volume a luxury for anyone interested in the Pacific. Ediciones Doce Calles has taken great care with this first degree scroll of a new collection, Pictura Mundi, dedicated to celebrating travels, explorations and geographical discoveries.
▲Viktor Orban, at a rally near the Romanian border in May 2017 [Károly Árvai/Hungarian government].
ANALYSIS / Elena López-Doriga
On April 8, 2018, parliamentary elections were held in Hungary for the renewal of the 199 members of the National Assembly, the only chamber of the Hungarian Parliament. The high turnout of 68.13% exceeded that of the 2010 elections, when 64.36% of the electoral roll turned out to vote, a record high not seen since 2002. Prime Minister Viktor Orban, in power since 2010, secured a fourth term, the third in a row, as his party, Fidesz, and its ally, the Christian Democratic People's Party, won 134 of the 199 seats. Orban, the longest-serving European leader as head of government after Angela Merkel, has in some respects become as influential a leader as the German chancellor.
These electoral data - the high turnout and the broad support achieved by a leader not well regarded by all in Brussels - raise some questions. Why has there been so much social mobilization at the time of voting? Why is the result these elections in the spotlight of the European Union?
Historical background
Hungary is a country located in Central Europe bordering Austria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. The second largest river in Europe, the Danube, crosses the entire country and divides the capital of Budapest into two different territories (Buda and Pest).
Hungary joined the European Union in 2004. This event was much desired by the Hungarians as they saw it as an advance in their democracy, a step forward for the development of the country and a rapprochement with the admired West. It was the desire to make a change of course in their history, since, after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918, the country lived under two totalitarian regimes since World War II: first under the rule of the Arrow Cross Party (fascist, pro-German and anti-Semitic), during which 80,000 people were deported to Auschwitz, and later by the occupation of the Soviet Union and its post-war policies. In those times individual freedoms and freedom of speech ceased to exist, arbitrary imprisonment became commonplace, and the Hungarian secret police carried out series of purges both within and outside the Party hierarchies. Thus, Hungarian society suffered great repression from the beginning of World War II in 1945, which did not stop until the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989.
In economic terms, the transition from communism to capitalism was very hard for vast social sectors. From a centralized Economics with highly protected sectors and heavy agricultural subsidies, a particularly severe adjustment plan was adopted by the government elected in March 1990 in the first free elections.
Accession to the European Union symbolized a turning point in Hungary's history, in a process of incorporation into the West that was previously marked by entrance NATO in 1999. Becoming part of the EU was the step towards the democracy that Hungary desired and that broad social consensus was evidenced by the majority support that the accession obtained - 83% of the votes - in the referendum of 2003.
Hungary in the European Union
Becoming a new EU member had a positive impact on Hungary's Economics , leading to a clear development and providing competitive advantages for foreign companies establishing a permanent presence in the country. But despite these appreciable advances and the enthusiasm shown by Hungary's accession to the EU, the picture has changed a lot since then, so that Euroscepticism has spread significantly among Hungarians. In recent years, a strong disagreement with the Brussels policies adopted during the 2015 refugee crisis has emerged in the domestic public opinion.
That year, Brussels decided to relocate the 120,000 refugees who had arrived in Hungary (from Syria, who were moving along the Balkan route to Germany and Austria) and Italy (mostly from North Africa). In order to distribute the refugees, quotas were established, setting the issue of refugees that each country should take in according to its size and GDP. The quota policy was challenged by the Visegradgroup countries (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia) and by Romania. Hungary erected a fence several hundred kilometers long on its southern border and refused to accept the reception quotas.
This attitude of closing borders and refusing to accept refugees was criticized by the leaders of the Union, who went so far as to threaten these countries with sanctions. The difficulty of reaching a consensus led to the signing in 2016 of an agreement with Turkey for this country to retain the flow of Syrian refugees. In 2017 the quotas for the distribution through the EU of the refugees who had previously arrived expired, without fill in the initially planned relocation. Although the moment of greatest political confrontation on this issue in the EU has passed, the refugee crisis has created a great divergence between the two blocks pointed out, eroding the supposed common European project .
In view of this status, Hungary's parliamentary elections on April 8, 2018 were particularly important, as the citizens of that country were going to have the opportunity to pronounce themselves on the ongoing pulse between Budapest and Brussels.
The main candidates
In the elections, the option that started with all the polls in favor was the coalition of the conservative Fidesz party and the Christian Democratic People's Party, with Viktor Orbán, 54, as candidate. Orbán first came to prominence in 1989 when, at the age of 26, he defied the communist regime and began to champion liberal principles, making him a symbol of Hungarians' aspirations to free themselves from totalitarianism and embrace Western values. However, his return to power in 2010, after a first term in office between 1998 and 2002, was marked by a shift towards a conservative tendency, characterized by greater control over Economics, the media and the judiciary. Orban claims to be an advocate of an "illiberal democracy": a system in which, although the Constitution may formally limit the powers of the Government, certain freedoms such as freedom of speech or thought are restricted in the internship . Orban often test the EU's red lines by presenting himself as a defender of a "Christian Europe" and an opponent of irregular immigration.
The party that intended to pose the main electoral challenge to Fidesz, taking away a good part of its voters, was surprisingly one located even further to the right: Jobbik (Movement for a Better Hungary), founded in 2003 and considered one of the most powerful extreme right-wing political organizations in the European Union. For years, this party did not hide its xenophobic, anti-Roma, anti-Semitic, nationalist and radically opposed to the prevailing political system in the EU, betting on a Hungary outside it. However, from 2013 onwards he moderated his language. While Orban was adopting an increasingly radical line, the leader of Jobbik, Gábor Vona, was tempering the positions of his party to present it as a conservative option, alternative to Fidesz, capable of attracting votes from the center. Gyöngyösi, one of the party's nationalist leaders, said: "We are the party of the 21st century, while Fidesz is from the last century and represents the old. The division between left and right no longer makes sense, it is part of the past, of the old politics".
On the other side of the political spectrum, a list formed by the Socialist Party(MSZP) and the center-left ecologist party Parbeszed ("Dialogue"), headed by a leader of the latter, Gargely Karacsony, was running for the elections. The left-wing candidate had broad support from the MSZP, but not from his former colleagues in the environmentalist LMP party, from which he split five years ago, which could lead to a split vote.
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Completed a second fence at the border with Serbia, in April 2017 [Gergely Botár/Hungarian government]. |
The election campaign
During the campaign, there was speculation that Fidesz might lose votes due to a series of corruption scandals involving government officials accused of embezzling European aid money. Jobbik and other civil service examination groups took advantage of this status to promote themselves as anti-corruption parties, focusing much of their campaign on this issue and advocating an improvement in public services, especially healthcare.
However, the most prominent topic of the election campaign was not corruption, the malfunctioning of the public health system or low wages, but immigration. The Orbán government had refused to accept the refugee quotas imposed by the EU from Brussels, arguing that taking in immigrants is a matter of domestic policy in which foreign organizations should not intervene. He insisted that Hungary has the right to refuse to receive immigrants, especially if they are Muslims, reiterating his rejection of multiculturalism, which he considers a mere illusion. Orbán was of the opinion that the refugees arriving at Hungary's gates were not fighting for their lives, but were economic migrants in search of a better life. Therefore, Orbán's political campaign was a clear message: Illegal immigrants in Hungary: yes or no? Who should decide about Hungary's future, the Hungarians or Brussels?
Reducing the electoral call to one question had the main effect of a broad social mobilization. According to the civil service examination, Orbán used the migration topic to draw popular attention away from widespread corruption.
Another core topic in Fidesz's political campaign was the constant accusations against George Soros, whom Orbán identified as the main enemy of the State. Soros is an American billionaire of Hungarian-Jewish origin who, through his Open Society Foundation (OSF), finances various NGOs dedicated to promote liberal, progressive and multicultural values in different parts of the world. In 1989 Soros funded Viktor Orban to study in England, and in 2010 he donated $1 million to his government to help with environmental cleanup after a chemical accident. But Soros' reputation in Hungary took a hit during the 2015 migration crisis. His advocacy of humane attention to refugees ran up against Orban's attitude. During the campaign, he accused Soros of using OSF to "flood" Europe with a million migrants a year and undermine the continent's "Christian culture."
In addition, prior to the elections, Fidesz approved an amendment to the Hungarian Higher Education Act, which establishes new conditions for foreign universities in Hungary, something that has been seen as a direct attack on the Central European University of Budapest. The Soros-funded institution is highly regarded for promoting critical thinking, liberal values and academic freedom. The new legislation threatens university autonomy, the free hiring of professors and the international character of degrees.
The European Commission showed its differences with the Orbán government on several of the issues that occupied the electoral campaign. Thus, it expressed its dissatisfaction with the new university law, considering that it is not compatible with the fundamental freedoms of the EU internal market, as it "would violate the freedom to provide services and the freedom of establishment". He also criticized that Orbán had not complied with the refugee quota, despite the ruling of the Court of Justice, and that he had campaigned using the disagreement he has with the EU for electoral purposes.
The result the elections
In the April 8, 2018 elections, the Fidesz party (in its alliance with the Christian Democratic People's Party) won a third consecutive wide victory, even bigger than the previous one, with almost half of the popular vote (48.89%) and its third two-thirds absolute majority (134 out of 199 seats). It was the first time since the fall of communism in 1989 that a party had won three elections in a row.
The Jobbik party managed to become the leading party in the civil service examination, coming in second place with 19.33% of the vote and 25 seats. However, its vote growth was minimal and it gained only two extra seats, remaining virtually stagnant at 2014 figures. Jobbik's second place was rather propitiated by the weakness of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP), whose debacle pushed it into third place, with 12.25% of the vote and 20 seats. It was the first time since 1990 that the MSZP did not come in first or second place, putting an end to the bipartisanship it had maintained with Fidesz since 1998.
On the other hand, since his return to government in 2010, Fidesz has significantly modified the electoral system, reducing the issue of legislators from 386 to 199 and eliminating the second round, which does not favor smaller parties, which could form alliances between rounds of voting. By securing two thirds of the chamber, Fidesz will be able to continue governing comfortably and reforming the Constitution to suit itself.
EU reaction
A week after the elections, tens of thousands of opponents took to the streets of Budapest, disagreeing with an electoral system described as "unfair", which has given Prime Minister Viktor Orban a landslide victory at the polls after a campaign based on the refusal to accept refugees.
The congratulatory letter addressed to Orban by the president of the European committee , Donald Tusk, was considered by various media to be cooler than the one issued on other similar occasions. The EU is concerned that Orban continues with his defense of an "illiberal" democracy and that he seems to be leading the country towards authoritarian tendencies. The government's purchase of many media outlets in recent years, in order to isolate the civil service examination further propaganda, resembles what has happened in countries such as Russia and Turkey.
It is true that with Orban at the head of the government Hungary has grown economically at a good pace and that the middle classes have improved their status, but his latest victory has been due not only to good economic management , but also to the defense of values that the Hungarian people consider important (essentialism, Christianity, respect for borders).
European socialists have not been pleased with Orban's new victory, insinuating that it is a setback for democracy in Hungary. The joy that the populist parties have expressed over his victory is test that Orban, whose training Fidesz still belongs to the European People's Party, has become an exponent of modern ultra-nationalism, which threatens democratic ideas of the European Union.
For the moment, Brussels is being cautious with Hungary, even more so than with the British Brexit, since Viktor Orban, seen by many as "the EU rebel", unlike the UK, wants to remain within the bloc, but change part of the ideals he stands for.