Tag: European Union

Playing To Lose, Cerar Goes About Saving Private Mramor

Yesterday, finance minister Dušan Mramor offered to resign over a bonuses scandal that’s been overflowing for about two weeks now. In what was a somewhat unexpected move, PM Cerar did not accept the resignation. Instead he subjected Mramor to a mere slap on the wrist and then proceeded to extol Mramor’s track record at the ministry. Although the affair involved relatively modest amounts, the public and the media were indignant and the pundits were near-unanimous that Cerar will let Mramor go. Since he didn’t, the overall sentiment is that Cerar committed political suicide and will never be re-elected again. The truth, in pengovsky’s view, is somewhat different: Cerar has long since become unelectable, most likely on Day 2 of his tenure. It just took him over a year and two pan-european structural crises to come to that conclusion. Thus in terms of his own political future he has little to lose. He can, however, make the remaining three-and-a-half years count. And for that, he needs Mrarmor more than Mramor needs him.

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Miro The Man and Dušan The Man’s Man, some time ago. (source)

The gist of the story is that Mramor, while serving as dean of the Faculty of Economics in 2008, OK’ed use of special clause in labour legislation that provided for a 24/7 standby bonus. The clause was meant to be used to augment paychecks to various branches of first responders and similar services, but in mid-2008, apparently to circumvent the havoc wrought by the across-the-board austerity at the time, the faculty came up with this clause and, well, bent over backwards to expand its interpretation to cover university professors as well. The move worked so well that it was copied by nine out of eleven faculties, members of University of Ljubljana (Faculty of Theology and Faculty of Law being the notable exceptions).

Unmitigated disaster

Now, ever since the story broke, it has been an unmitigated PR disaster for Mramor and everyone else involved. This includes Minster of Education Maja Makovec Brenčič, former SD heavyweight and incumbent dean of the Faculty of Economics Metka Tekavčič and several other public personae. Especially daft was the feeble defence mounted by the faculty, now with Tekavčič at the helm, which only reinforced the perception of entitlement on the part of the academic elite. The fact that the whole issue centered on about half a million euros across nine faculties, did little to ausage the problem. Quite to the contrary. It is a known quirk of the Slovenian voter that the more he or she can relate to a number, the more emotional their response will be.

Case in point being Mramor who, over the years, accumulated around 45k euros in “standby bonuses”. 45,000 euros is not an unreachable amount of money. It’s about three-years-worth of average Slovenian wage. To put it another way, 45k will buy you an mid-to-upper-range BMW. Which is what makes the people so mad. They have an approximate idea about how much 45k euros actually is and they base their judgements on that. To put in perspective, only about a week ago, Slovenia was forced to pay 42 million euros (almost a thousand times more) to Croatia as damages for electricity not delivered from Krško nuclear plant between 2002 and 2003, when a political decision was taken to punitively and unilaterally withhold electricity from Croatia, even though the neighbouring country owns a 50% stake in the plant. Point being that the voters will more likely and more furiously take issue with smaller amounts of money. Doubly so if the payouts are legally dubious, as they are in this case.

Now, in the end Mramor has promised to pay back the whole amount, but only after being prodded by the media and – presumably – by the PM himself. Before that he somehow came to the conclusion that he would only pay back some 3000 euros. As if we learned nothing from the case of Gregor Virant in 2011.

Do-Goodnik becomes unelectable

But enough about Mramor. What he did was wrong, regardless of the motives. And while he’s not off the hook just yet, he does get to live another day or so and in politics a week is a lifetime. What is equally interesting, however, is why Cerar bailed Mramor out in the first place and squandered what little remained of the ethical platform the SMC ran on in 2014.

First, the already mentioned fact that Cerar has, in fact, been unelectable for some time. At the very least from the onset of the refugee crisis where he alienated a substantial part of the progressive vote by raising a razor-wire fence on the border with Croatia and empowering the military to police civilians. On the other hand, he only infuriated the right-wing which – although clamouring for these measures – predictably deemed them to little, too late, when finally passed. But in all likelihood, Cerar’s political demise began soon after he began his term, when the high-flying ethical do-goodnik platform met the bleak politcal and economic reality of Slovenia. After kicking ministers out for much smaller transgressions and having seen himself and Mramor brush with a similar affair, Cerar finally realized that it was in effect he himself who was pulling the rug from under his feet. Others were just helping.

Not that there was any lack of help. During yesterday’s press conference, Cerar took a swipe at SDS and SD, more or less saying that he will not have the composition of this government being dictated to him. That the SDS is making life difficult for Cerar is hardly news. After all, they’re the opposition, even if they’re being strangely blunt about that as of late. Namely, according to one source, the party openly threatened the SMC with making their life a living hell if the largest party does not support the SDS nominee for a vacant post at the European Court of Human Rights. The SMS refused to oblige. Hell did in fact commence.

SD ante portas

But the slap across the face of the SD was much more telling. The party, although still in relative ruin after its electoral flop, was given a new lease of life by Cerar’s strategic mistake of making them coalition partners. It soon started to re-establish its economic base and soon enough found itself in a massive brawl with the SMC over the sale of Telekom Slovenije. The SD lost that particular battle but stalled the whole thing just enough to derail the sale. Then came the beheading of the bad bank where SD gained a whole new range of informal power and – not unimportant – where Mramor lost. Which sort of made him the next target. And since he was apparently vunerable in the bonuses department… well, you now know the story.

From this point of view, had Cerar accepted Mramor’s resignation, the SD would have practically owned the government. They’ve squeezed a number of consessions out of Cerar as it is. The latest one being a shamelessly brazen creation of a party fief. officially known as the State Forest Company, it centralizes forestry management and falls under the purview of – yup, you guessed it – minister of agriculture, forestry and food, headed by leader of the SD Dejan Židan. Had Cerar allowed them to go any further, he would relinquish what little control he has on the home front.

Bond…. Sovereign bond

Ditto for the foreign front. Had Cerar relieved Mramor of his duties, Slovenia would in all likelihood start raising many-an-eyebrow of various investors all over the world. Until now, these were more or less happy to buy Slovenian debt precisely because Mramor and his predecessor Čufer handled the post-bailout situation adroitly and took the country of various watch-lists in Brussels, Berlin and Washington, even though (in all honesty) the pace of reforms and privatization has been glacial, at best. Bottom line, with the to-do list still being more or less the same as it was under Bratušek tenure, Mramor is Cerar’s best insurance against the possibility that the humanitarian and political crisis (in terms of EU issues) is joined by a resurgent financial crisis, too.

Thus, by protecting finance minister Mramor, Cerar conceded that he’ll lose the next elections. ironically, to win them, he probably has to play to lose, anyhow.

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6 Lessons Of Fence Erection

It took less than twelve hours for Miro Cerar‘s “temporary technical obstacles” to hit their first, well, obstacle. And, boy, did they hit it. While Miro the Man is trying to find his way through the minefield of domestic political ill-wishers, the Mid-East burning and own good intentions paving the road to hell, a familiar monster came from under the bed and bit him right in the ass: the border dispute between Slovenia and Croatia.

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(source)

That erecting the fence tehnical obstacles will be anything but a walk in the park was more or less clear. But even though the government did take the precaution of notifying the Arbitration Court as well as the government in Zagreb, the latter claimed that parts of the fence crossed into its territory and threatened to remove it of its own accord. Needless to say that Croatian special police immediately appeared in the area already teeming with Slovenian police and army personnel. Which provided for some nice throwbacks to 2007 when then-PM Janez Janša sent special police units on the bank of the Mura where Croatia was up to, ironically, technical work on levees and railroads.

Only this time around it was Slovenian authorities who were putting up fence technical installations and the Croatians who are going apeshit about it. To their credit, Zagreb thusfar only issued a strong protest to the Slovenian charge d’affaires, but this is the sort of situation where things can go very wrong very quickly.

A few things need to be noted at this stage:

1) For the second time in as many months, the situation on the border between two EU member states has flared up dramatically. Weeks ago, Hungarian security services disarmed a number of Croatian policemen on a train full of refugees supposedly on Hungarian territory. So far these are isolated incidents in an altogether precarious situation. But mistakes do happen and when people are tired and/or scared, they tend to see patterns that don’t exist. They also tend to overreact. Then all hell breaks loose.

2) The pull-back-or-else tactic employed by Croatia is additionally complicated by the fact that it was that same approach that caused Slovenia to relocate its border checkpoint on the Dragonja river a few hundred metres north in 1991, thereby writing the opening chapter of the still-running border dispute.

3) Both governments, especially the one in Ljubljana should remember there are idiots aplenty on both sides of the border. Sometimes they’re even elected. And that they will inevitably try to foment trouble to advance their own agenda.

4) Speaking of fomenting trouble, it should now be clear (once again) that politics is not linear and that introducing a new variable changes the entire environment and has unpredictable consequences.

5) Which is exactly what Cerar’s opponents, both within the coalition and without, are counting on. Apart from expecting the new influx of refugees (which has yet to materialise) everyone is on the lookout for a scuffle between the two neighbouring countries. And to top it off (and as predicted) the hardcore proponents of the fence are claiming it is too little too late and that Cerar should resign immediately while the fervent among those opposing the fence are already calling Cerar a Fascist anyhow. Talk about losing friends and alienating people.

6) The Pandora’s box is now open and instead of managing one particularly demanding crisis, Cerar now has at least two more on his hands: a crisis in relations with Croatia (not that we were all that chummy to begin with) as well as a political crisis which will explode right in his face the very moment this thing with refugees will start showing signs of abating.

Howgh.

 

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Open Mouth Insert Fence

Earlier today Prime Minister Miro Cerar announced Slovenia will “undertake additional technical measures” on its border with Croatia. Yesterday, the government voted to “step up measures to control migrant influx including necessary measures on the Schengen border” which the media widely translated as intention to put up a fence on the Slovenian-Croatian border which doubles as the Southern Schengen border. Combined with last week’s reports that elements of a fence were already in the country, that the government has already selected a contractor to erect it and that lately government officials avoided questions on the issue saying it has been labeled confidential (probably in the interest of the national security and all that jazz) it does seem that PM Cerar is up for some open-mouth-insert-foot time.

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Now, the whole fence issue has been on the table even since Hungarian leader Orban started putting up his own fence on his borders with Serbia and Croatia. At that time Cerar and his government rejected the notion of a fence as a viable tool in tackling the humanitarian catastrophe that is the refugee crisis. In doing that, Cerar earned praise from many quarters (pengovsky included), not in the least because after the initial stumbles the government branches most equipped for disaster relief have taken over control of the situation.

Ever since, however, there was slow-but-constant backtracking on the soft-handed approach as the influx of refugees stretched the country’s resources which – at least in part – was exabberated by neighbouring Croatia transporting those poor sods near the border in no particular order or schedule and then letting them loose to make their way across the border as best as they could – even across treacherous terrain or fast-flowing rivers.

But for the most part, the backtracking was generated by the attempt of the politically inexperienced top brass to respond to challenges from the opposition, the neighbouring countries and the EU, all at the same time. The inevitable result, however, was the self-induced sense of panic because those three challenges were conflicting each other. The opposition wanted to declare martial law (or something to that effect), the neighbouring countries wanted Slovenia to either take all the refugees dumped on her (Croatia) or put up a fence of their own (Hungary) of something in between (Austria) while the EU demanded the country behave like a member state should and take over the refugees in an orderly and effective manner.

Trying to accommodate all three obviously created a cacophony of messages, making the government appear as if it is losing the grip on the situation. And once *that* message got through, suddenly the idea of policing powers for the army didn’t seem all that bad. And once that line was crossed, the fence seemed like an issue not necessary to sit on anymore. And here we are. The only problem being that they got it all wrong.

Yesterday in Brussels, interior minister Györkös-Žnidar said that the decision was “political”. Well, politically, this is a disaster of magnificent proportions. Not only has the nominally centre-to-centre-left government alienated a large part of its (potential) base, it has failed to warm up to the right-wing, too. Despite the fact that it was clamouring for just such a fence. Because the challenges by the right-wing parties were never about the refugees. The SDS and the NSi don’t give a pair of fetid dingo’s kidneys about that or – to be more precise – they care just as much and in such a direction as Mutti Angela says they should. Thus, if PM Cerar is trying to show to the right-wing parties and their voters that he can manage the situation via erecting a fence, he’s in for a surprise. Because no sooner than he can say “migrant influx” someone from right-wing top echelon will be on the telly saying this was too little too late, asking when exactly does he intend to activate the army with its newfound powers, too.

Speaking of the army, the amendment to the Defence Act empowering the army with authority over civilians under special circumstances (for that is what it essentially is) is on hold pending a referendum challenge, with the plaintiffs now petitioning the constitutional court to allow the referendum since the parliament voted to prevent it, citing national security issues. Now, pengovsky has no doubts that the court will disallow a referendum on army powers just as it allowed one on same-sex marriage (more on both issues soonish).

But as it were, PM Cerar and the government have just declared the Balkan Mini Summit (called a few weeks ago by Jean-Claude Juncker and Angela Merkel) null and void and are now involuntarily sliding into the same bracket as Hungary, with a strikingly similar explanation. The government seems to be sensing this and is bending over backwards to explain to everyone who is willing to listen that these are “temporary technical measures” and not really a fence. And yet they seem to be the only ones buying that particular spin.

Needless to say that the pandering to both sides continues. During the press conference detailing those “temporary technical measures” PM Cerar at the same time said that while the fence will be put up it will not impede the ability to accept and process the refugees. Which begs the question why exactly are the new measures necessary. And, only minutes later, the PM explained at length that the sole purpose of the “technical measures” is to prevent dispersal of refugees, only to blurt out a while later that dispersal is in fact an unlikely scenario. So, which is it?

That there will be no simple and clean solution to the refugee crisis was clear from its onset. But it is becoming increasingly hard to watch this government talking itself into one political trap after another. As things stand now, the only ones profiting from his flip-flopping on how to tackle the crisis are his political adversaries. And he has just given them yet another stick to beat him with it.

 

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The Army Is A Broad Sword, Not A Scalpel

Following a surge in influx of refugees which apparently stretched Slovenian personnel and housing resources to their limits, the government of Miro Cerar came up with amendments to Defence Act granting the Slovenian army policing powers and rushed them through the parliament in a rarely used emergency legislative procedure. The move, backed by both the coalition and most of the opposition is aimed to provide relief to the overstretched police and Civil defence force. But in reality it opens a Pandora’s box of the military spilling over into the civilian sphere.

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“The army will perform its duty.” Bruce Willis/William Deveraux in The Siege (source)

Admittedly, the numbers Slovenian authorities were dealing with are staggering in terms of the country’s size and its resources. More than 20.000 refugees came to the Slovenian border via the “West Balkan route” through Croatia in the last couple of days. Quite a substantial number of them, as per Slovenian government, without any notification from their Croatian counterparts who reportedly transported the refugees somewhere in the vicinity of theborder rather than to the actual border crossings and then cut them loose, leaving them to make their way across the river, fields and marshes into Slovenia.

And since Slovenia, trying to be European to a fault, insists on an orderly processing and transfer of refugees from Croatia through its several refugee centres onwards to Austria, things got tricky at the Slovenia/Croatia border, prompting the government in Ljubljana to employ the army as a policing force.

Which is a big fucking mistake.

The problem is, of course, many-fold. First, the mere fact that with this, the firewall between the civilian and the military sphere is being, albeit slightly and temporarily, torn down. Giving the army powers over the civilian population is a big no-no. Unless a state of emergency was declared and last time pengovsky checked, that wasn’t the case. Although some people act as if it were. And this is the problem number two.

A lot of what we were seeing these past few days were knee-jerk reactions to events that were and are apparently getting the better of people at the top of the food chain whose primary role is to keep things strategically in check. As if deploying the military was the only alternative to using police forces.

There’s the old adage that if a hammer is all you know how to use, everything looks like a nail. But this is not a case of trigger-happy politicos jumping the gun (literally) and launching a scenario not unlike in The Siege. No, a more proper parallel would be that of a first-time plane passengers on a very bumpy ride, already reaching for their life jackets while the flight crew is still serving drinks.

A number of those alternatives came to light as the parliament was debating the amendments to the Law on Defence. These include aid by the European frontier agency Frontex as well as bilateral help from other EU states’ police forces, most notably Austria and Germany. These options are now being considered and reportedly about to be enacted.

Problemo numero tres is the actual scope of powers granted to the military. While members of the Slovenian army apparently have some crowd control training, there is serious concern as to whether Slovenian soldiers have the (legal) knowledge and experience to execute these powers with necessary restraint and respect for human rights. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that Slovenian Army are prone to human rights violations. What I’m saying is that the army – any army – was not designed with this in mind. Simple as that. And by the time enough military units are trained in the nuances of policing civilians and equipped to do that effectively, this crisis will have long passed.

Which brings us to the fourth and the biggest problem. This, too, shall pass. And after it does, we’ll be left with army units with a shitload of equipment they won’t need anymore and training that does not correspond to their basic mission. A waste of resources, if I ever saw one. But not only that. The most worrisome leftover will be the legislation itself.

Because if you think that the provision granting policing powers to the army is going to go away after this is over, you’re sorely mistaken. It is here to stay, for ever and ever. Just like increased political meddling with the public television or the fiscal rule.

And even if the government plans to repeal the provision after the crisis abates, someone should tell them they will fail to secure the necessary two-thirds majority. Because the right-wing parties which supported the provision practically without dissent (customary political bickering, gloating and we-told-you-so’s not withstanding) and who find Victor Orban a rather appealing character, were long clamouring for something like this. And now they got it, they’re not going to let go of it that easily.

There will be other governments and there will be other crises. And bringing in the army has suddenly become much easier. All that is needed now is a technical request by the government to the parliament and – poof! – the army suddenly has policing powers again.

Luckily, yesterday cooler heads prevailed and the bar for approving special powers was raised to a two-thirds rather than just a simple majority as originally proposed by the government. Also, the amended law provides a sunset clause for these powers which expire after three months if not revoked sooner. They can, however, be extended, too, pending a re-vote. Meaning that this is not really a strong safeguard against abuse.

Fear of abuse was present in the subtext of the presentation by the Chief of the General Staff, Maj. Gen. Andrej Osterman, when he addressed the parliament yesterday. Namely, among other things, Osterman said Slovenian army neither wants nor has asked for policing powers, but will perform the duty as instructed.

It was Bruce Willis in the role of General William Deveraux in The Siege who said that the army is a broad sword, not a scalpel.

And yet, here we are. What could possibly go wrong?

 

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Rule 34a

That Slovenia fought against watering-down of the Telecom Single Market directive (a.k.a. Single Digital Market) was for all intents and purposes the most surprising piece of information coming from this sorry little excuse for a country in the last ten days or so. Even more surprising than the decapitation of the bad-bank where the CEO and chief of the supervisory board were dismissed over excessive pay. And infinitely more surprising than the story of the NSA and German BND bulk-intercepting international calls from Slovenia between 2005 and 2008. Both of which will get written up here in due course. But first, this net neutrality thing.

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(source: savetheinternet.eu)

You can read it up, but the nuts and bolts of it are fairly simple: either everyone gets to use the web under the same conditions in terms of speed, access and services provided or network operators get to decide which services or users get preferential treatment (for a price, of course) and which get to crowd with the rest of us sorry bastards on the slow end of the interwebz. Or, what could happen is that the network operators get to pick their favourite service(s) and charge less – or nothing at all – for their use, relegating every other competing service to the status of an also-ran. Point being that under the proposed Single Digital Market directive the telcos get to pick the winners and the losers.

This is about where and how you’ll get your news, for example. Or your porn. Not that there’s much difference, but still. On the neutral net, where telcos/network providers compete with one another with plans, prices and ease of access, you’re able to pick and choose between RTVSLO, BBC, Russia Today, NaturalNews.com (yuck) or even FoxNews. On the not-so-neutral net your provider will most likely limit you to a handful of news sites, at least one of them being their own. Everything else will either be available at a premium or at lower speeds. Or both. The same goes for porn. The neutral net brings you PornHub, Redtube or plain old /hc/ board on 4chan.org, depending on your fancy. The other web brings you your provider’s porn service. It is a sort of Rule 34a.

 

If it exists, there is porn of it – no exceptions. Provided you pay for it and we get to deliver it.

 

And would you really like your network provider to know exactly what sick turn-ons you have? Methinks not.

And this is just the way things are today. Imagine a couple of years from now, when the IoT takes off for real. You buy a net-enabled fridge telling you what’s missing and updating your shopping list. But on the not-neutral web your network operator gets to choose which brand of the fridge gets preferential treatment within its network or which on-line shops are available for such a device. Hell, it can even limit your online shopping experience, preventing you from getting the best deal out there. Or maybe it can charge you extra if your wifi-enabled car needs an update. The list goes on forever.

Also, this is about cats.

All of the above makes it all the more astounding that Slovenia actually took up the issue on the EU level. I mean, here we have arguably the single most important long-term policy issue since the introduction of the euro and this country actually wants to do something? Wow. Just wow. In fact, Slovenia and the Netherlands were out-voted on the issue, with Croatia and Greece abstaining, while the 24 remaining member states green-lighted the draft (page 13 of the link).

You see, the thing is that next to the Netherlands, Slovenia is the only EU member to have set net neutrality as a legal norm. More or less. In Slovenia at least the legislation was watered down via lobbying by the telcos, but not enough to prevent the first-ever rulings by AKOS, the comms watchdog, which in January fined the two largest mobile providers for providing zero-rating services. And now, as the year slowly draws to an end, the European Commission put forward a draft Single Digital Market directive which would have made these rulings next to impossible as it basically trades the much-hailed abolition of roaming charges (two years hence) for a two-speed Internet (most likely to commence in various forms immediately). Little wonder Slovenia and the Netherlands have problems with it since it directly undermines their national legislation, several orders of magnitude better than what the draft directive provides for.

At its most crudest, this is a case where a drop in profits in one segment of the industry is mitigated by a free-fire zone of surcharges in another segment. Not to mention the fact that the move will have massive repercussions far beyond the consumer sector. Limiting speed and/or access to information will impact education and research, creative industries will once again be divided into haves and have-nots and home will no longer be simply where the wi-fi is.

This, despite the name, will be anything but a single digital market.

The ball is now in the European Parliament’s court. Last year, the EP shot down a directive draft which – compared to the current one – was more than acceptable. But with Brussels packing more lobbyists than Washington D.C., one can never be sure of the final outcome. (Slighty OT: Here is a handy tool on lobbying stats, courtesy of Politico.eu).

Which is why a number of grass-roots initiatives sprang up all over the EU to, well, save the internet. In Slovenia, too, where media and the politicos have apparently finally started paying attention. Whether this will be enough remains to be seen, but if the fate of the ACTA treaty a few years ago and the recent Safe-harbour ruling by the European Court are omens to go by, then this whole thing can still be overturned.

Because as it stands, for all the goodies it brings vis-a-vis mobile roaming, the TSM directive in fact heralds yet another social stratification. This time of a digital nature, ordained by the industry whose hey-day has long since passed.

We Need To Talk About Hungary

So Hungary started erecting a barbed-wire fence on the border with Slovenia as well yesterday morning. Since the Orban government was busy doing exactly that for the past few weeks on its borders with Serbia and Croatia, seemingly to stem the influx of refugees, the move shouldn’t come as a surprise. But Ljubljana was surprised and has officially yet to respond to the move.

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Shitty graphics by yours truly

According to media reports, it was the Slovenian police which first noted the Hungarian army fooling around with metal constructions at Pince border crossing. The foreign ministry was notified and – nothing. Foreign minister Karl Erjavec lamented the fact that Hungary did not notfiy Slovenia ahead of time and later said that his Hungarian counterpart Peter Szijjarto told him in an informal phone call that fence is “a temporary installation”. Yeah, well, so was the Berlin wall.

Admittedly, the joke in this case is on Slovenia. The country’s intelligence services apparently failed to even predict let alone detect Hungarian moves. Even worse, three weeks ago Slovenian president Borut Pahor met Victor Orban and said that some Hungarian measures need to be taken into account. To Pahor’s credit, he did manage a between-the-lies criticism of Orban’s policies by stating that “some of his assessments left me [Pahor] speechless”. But actions speak louder than words. And one wonders just how speechless the Prez was yesterday, when he woke up to an iron curtain on his North-Eastern border. Needless to say Slovenia has yet to lodge a formal protest with the Hungarian ambassador in Ljubljana.

Now, clichés about temporary solutions having a tendency of becoming permanent aside, we really need to talk about Hungary. On an Europe-wide level. The country has now erected or is in the process of doing so, a barbed wire fence on the border with three of its seven neighbouring states. Since its borders with Romania and Ukraine are also the outer borders of the Schengen Area and the EU respectively, the only intra-EU borders which remain non-fenced one way or another are borders with Austria and Slovakia. And those two countries suspended Schengen rules on their side of the border (as did Slovenia last week, mind you), making Hungary, well, fenced-off from the rest of the world.

And that is a huge problem.

You see, the difference between this latest case of Hungarian metal works and all the preceding ones is that this is the first instance of a newly installed physical barrier between two Schengen Area members. Which sort of defies the point of a common Schengen area and raises the question of just how much Hungary can get away with in terms of breaching basic EU agreements. Because unlike other suspensions of Schengen rules, this one wasn’t announced. And even those countries that did suspend Schengen, are doing so in terms of reintroduced border-crossing check-points rather than the new Iron Curtain.

Which brings us to the next problem: in his previous post, pengovsky wrote that the barbed-wire fence, while officially meant to stem the influx of refugees is indeed a show for domestic consumption and a message to any Hungarian who wants to challenge Orban’s grip on power. Fact it that Hungarians can not cross a single neighbouring border without someone at least knowing about it. If – or, rather, when – the fence project continues, that particular somenone will be tempted to start allowing prohibiting travel. Which is why Klaxons should be ringing in Brussels. Loudly.

And if that is not enough for you, try this on for size. Days ago Hungarian parliament by a large majority passed an act increasing powers of the police and the military in responding to the refugee crisis. Those powers now include use of nonlethal firearms as well as disregarding the right of the privacy of home in search of “illegal migrants” as the official term goes.

So, now we have a fenced-off country where the police and the army have hugely increased powers and overlapping jurisdictions. Suppose in a few months or years someone comes up with an amendment to the increased powers act, replacing the term “illegal migrants” with, say, “enemies of the state”.

Worried yet?

UPDATE: According to Slovenian media Hungarian army began dismantling the fence with Budapest apparently claiming it was all a misunderstading. Riiiight….

UPDATE 2: This via Andrew MacDowall via Hugarian Spectrum. Apparently the offical term for the installation on the border was not “a fence” but “a wire obstacle”. Brilliant! 😀

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The Week Schengen Again Became Just A Place In Luxembourg

“Vat is your kargo?” The German border-policeman at a check-point just hundreds of metres inland from border with Austria could have very well escaped from a high-octane H’Wood flick while his muted partner looked like he barely missed the cast of Kobra 11, die Autobahnpolizei series. It was just a few days after Germany suspended Schengen rules on its Southern border and pengovsky spent previous few hours fretting over the possibility of a lenghty Stau on the border crossing which is inclined to see bumper-to-bumper traffic on a normal day, let alone in the midst of what turned out to be a near-complete breakdown of free movement rules within the EU in the wake of the refugee crisis.

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Rear-view mirror image of German border-checkpoint

But staying true to their Teutonic reputation, the procedure took less than five minutes. It was brutally efficient. Traffic was squeezed into a single lane with the first crew visually scanning incoming vehicles, another crew pulled over those selected (such as pengovsky, unshaven, driving a white cargo van), the third team then directed us to one of several two-men teams performing the actual check, in our case the Dolph Lundgren lookalike and his Danny Devito-esque sidekick. And, wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, it was all over before you can say Schengen Agreement. Polite, efficient, not painful at all (provided you’re not trafficking refugees, I presume).

And yet, there it was. An intra-EU border, manned in full force. There is a generation of young people to whom a border between, say Austria and Germany or (albeit to a lesser extent) between Slovenia and Austria is but an abstract concept. Abolition of border checks and free movement of people has, as far and reality on the ground is concerned, probably the most important factor in development of a common, transnational, European identity. That and the introduction of Euro. And we all know how well *that* particular clustefurck was handled. In fact, the Schengen cascade effect was a real-life demonstration of what would happen in case of a “controlled Grexit”. A shitstorm of biblical proportions.

The visceral Visegrad Four

But, as shocking as it was, Germany should not be riled on account of closing its border with Austria. Yes, the historical parallels are not pretty and you can be excused for thinking this is what happened just before the Anschluss (nevermind the fact that just before Anschluss refugees were running the other way and, well… brush up on your history, dammit!) Also, yes, the move primarily fucks over the refugees who have already made it all this way just to be denied overcoming the last hurdle. But no, this is not a takeover of power by Bavarian hardliners in Berlin. Still, the Schengen Agreement is on life support as of last week. But rather than Germany the Visegrad Four are to blame for the predicament.

Germany got plenty of bad press over its handling of the Greek Crisis and rightly so, even though the Fabulous Duo Tsipras/Varoufakis performed quite admirably in fucking up the situation (OT and re last night’s elections Greece: Tsipras apparently did grow up in the course of the last nine months). It was therefore a bit of a poetic justice when Berlin invoked European solidarity in handling the refugee influx but was rebuffed harshly by Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland (which, admittedly is slowly caving in) and Hungary. But what should have been an instructive “we told you so” moment for Germany turned out to be a complete and utter perversion of European ideas and ideals by member states who seem to the think European Union is an a la carte restaurant where they can pick and choose some commitments and eschew others.

Because while German move to temporarily revoke Schengen is a policy move aimed at forcing other member states to either accept the quota system for handling refugees or start actively and generously participating in the relief effort on their own, Slovak suspension of Schengen rules (followed by non-Visegrad members Austria and the Nethelands) and mulled by Czech Republic and Poland is a misguided geopolitical move aimed at preventing the stream of refugees to spill over their border. As if it is not their problem.

Refugees for domestic consumption

That several Eastern European government responded to the refugee crisis in a borderline racist manner would make a good case study for psychoanalysts. Probably somewhere along the lines of inferiority complex meeting pre-modern politics meeting tribalism garnished with a splash of endemic fascism.

And elections. Croatia, for example, stopped processing refugees within two days of the wave spilling over the Croatian-Serbian border. True, the numbers are staggering and the country was apparently ill prepared to tackle the humanitarian crisis that was clearly coming their way. Slovenia, too, was slow to pull its collective head out of its collective ass, but the way Croatian system broke down was epic. Or, rather, disastrous. And once that went South and the refugees continued to go North, the government of Zoran Milanović simply threw their hands up and stopped registering newcomers. saying the refugees should go wherever they please. Which turned out to be Austria and Germany in most cases.

While Slovenian officialdom widely criticised Croatia for more or less simply passing the bucket to Slovenia, no-one mentioned that reasons go beyond the mere inability of Croatian services to handle the influx. You see, the centre-left government of Zoran Milanović is fighting an uphill re-election battle, where he is not shy of flirting with the right-wing agenda in attempts to win the centre vote. In doing this, he will join the long-and-distingusihed line of politicos who failed doing exactly that, but hey – when you’re out of ideas, anything will do. At any rate, the last thing Milanović (who tried to bluff his way though the humanitarian nightmare by saying that in allowing free passage Croatia “forced Slovenia and Hungary to tackle the problem, too”) needs three or four months before elections are thousands of refugees from Middle East and Africa. The HDZ-led opposition would in all likelihood start accusing him of “destroying the Croatian way of life, threatening security and Christian identity”. And if that sounds a lot like Victor Orban, you’re not far off. He and Karamarko of Croatian HDZ are more or less of the same flock.

Speaking of Orban, his barb-wire politics seems to be getting some unwarranted admiration around the EU, reports FT’s Peter Spiegel. The problem with this is twofold. First, the fact that barb-wire and paramilitaries patrolling it are quite unnecessary for an effective control of Schengen border, as demonstrated by Slovenian authorities which have done more or less the same by using much softer tactics. Even the lone scuffle that escalated into a cop using pepper-spray on a group of people turned out to have been at least in part provoked by an anarchist group which gets nervous every time it sees a robocop.

The Slovenian authorities were slow to react (the National Security Council only met on Friday afternoon, when the first refugees were already arriving at the border) but the responsible services got their shit together over the weekend and started registering refugees, busing them to shelters all over the country and providing basic medical care and sustenance. Slowly, to be sure, as hundreds of people were forced to wait on the Croatian side of several border crossings (and, at the same time, on the other side of the Schengen border), but over the course of the weekend the first wave was dealt with and – most importantly – the operative command of the situation was given to the Civil Protection and Disaster Relief, a higly efficient and flexible part of national security system aimed at providing disaster relief and which can be activated locally, regionally or nationally, depending on the emergency. Civil Protection usually coordinates all civilian services and voluntary organisations in any given situation and can enlist the support of the police or the army if need be. With these guys in control of the situation, chances of a fuck-up were brought down to the best possible minimum.

Random acts of kindness

And to add a bit of local colour: Twitter and Facebook trolls notwithstanding, the response to refugee influx throughout Slovenia has been fantastic. The police, while stretched to limits at certain points of border, gave their best and there was at least one heartwarming story of a family that got separated at the border but was reunited further inland, not to mention the countless individuals acts of help, be it in providing food and water for both refugees *and* the police, soft toys for children or even spontaneously picking people up and driving them to Austria, as carried out and written up by journo colleague Aleš Lednik (Slovenian only, I’m afraid)

Hauptbahnhof Graz. Yalla

Point being that the refugee crisis can be managed. Serbia has borne the brunt of it for the past few months. Parts of Italy and Greece are the main entry points for years on end. And here we have certain EU member states making a ruckus about a quota system for a few hundred thousand refugees which – had all things been equal – shouldn’t even begin to upset the normal balance of things in a union with five hundred million citizens (that’s, 500.000.000, five with eight zeroes)

In light of this, the only possible conclusion conclusion is that Orban’s fence (and other non-metal but similar policy initiatives) is a show for domestic consumption. The speed at which the fence was put up is breathtaking and reminiscent of the speed the Italian Fascist occupation regime put up barbed-wire fence around Ljubljana in 1942. And if that is the way Orban “defends” his country from a fictional enemy from without imagine what he is willing to do to keep “the enemy from within” at bay. Yes, the fence is a message. But not a message to refugees. It is a message to any Hungarian who dares challenge his authority.

And this is the real test the EU is now facing. Not migrant quotas per se, but whether the Union and its biggest players will allow small-time fascisms to proliferate while they pick and choose which parts of the European integration they adhere to and which they ignore (until next time).

Cameron ante portas

Even more importantly, the knee-jerk suspension of Schengen rules, especially if it spreads and continues for a while, will gravely harm the EU itself. What is to stop, say, David Cameron from demanding even more opt-outs and special treatments when tries to renegotiate the UK’s membership in the EU next year? And once he achieves that, what will stop other member states from following his example?

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