A European Union in Crisis over Immigration Should Consider President Trump's Advice : "Defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means, but also on the will of its people to prevail"

THE REAL QUESTION TODAY IS WHETHER IMMIGRATION WILL SPLIT EUROPE. • There are growing signs that Germany and France may be plotting the future without including the southern EU countries still bearing the burden of Merkel's open door for migrants. • • • ITALY HAS HAD IT WITH NGOs. The Spectator wrote on Thursday that "Italy’s patience with migrant charities is wearing thin." Fraser Nelson published a piece in the Spectator that Italy is wrestling with what to do "about the charities who send boats to bring asylum seekers to the Italian coast? Save the Children and seven others have been doing this for some time now, to the alarm of the Italian government." Nelson says Italy suspects that "some NGOs are colluding with the people-traffickers, and undermining attempts by the government to shut down a business that has already led to 2,200 deaths this year alone" -- the NGOs say they are saving lives -- true. But the question is whether helping the people traffickers in the final leg of the journey "oils the wheels of a new and evil industry in a way that means more, not fewer, deaths." The Spectator doesn't accuse the NGOs of taking money from the traffickers, but of "acting in concert to circumvent Italian border control." Some NGOs pride themselves in defying the government -- a German NGO named Jugend Rettet, says it has rescued 6,530 people since it started out last summer and seeks to “put pressure on state actors to enforce the fundamental right to life and security even in the Mediterranean.” But, asks the Spectator, "in so doing, might they be leading to more deaths in the Mediterranean?" • The Italian coastguard estimates that a third of asylum seekers who land in Italy are landed by NGOs. And, when the Italian government asked the NGO rescue boat operators to sign a code of conduct (including taking a policeman on board to ensure no laws are being broken), Save the Children agreed, but three of the eight refused -- including Jugend Rettet. The boat Iuventa, which is run by Jugend Rettet, has been seized by the Italian coastguard. The local prosecutor says he has “evidence of encounters between traffickers, who escorted illegal immigrants to the Iuventa, and members of the boat’s crew.” • Reports say that the Aegean / Greek migrant route has been effectively closed by the EU deal with Turkey, but crossings to Italy are up by a third so far this year -- so is the body count of those who have died trying to make it to Europe. And, the Italian public have had it. The former Mayor of Lampedusa, who won a UNESCO prize for her support of migrants, has been voted out and replaced by a mayor who takes a harder line. • • • THE EU TRIES TO FIND AN ACCEPTABLE MIGRANT POLICY. Carnegie Europe published a long report in late July that concludes : "European governments should engage to tackle the migration crisis at its source, otherwise Europe’s already tenuous tolerance of immigrants will only decrease." As Europe faces its greatest migration wave since the end of World War II, with migrants coming from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) but also the Sahel and now Asia, Frontex, the EU’s frontier agency, has warned that the number of people undertaking the Central Mediterranean crossing is on the rise with the arrival of summer. • A May 2017 German government report said that up to 6.6 million people were clustered around the Mediterranean preparing to cross to Europe from Africa. Carnegie Europe states : "Libya is fast becoming the main transition point, reportedly with 2.5 million migrants in North Africa waiting to cross by boat. Meanwhile, over 3 million remain held in Turkey, prevented from entering Europe by the EU’s March 2016 refugee deal with the Turkish government. The figures could be higher -- some estimates put the number of migrants preparing to enter Europe as high as 8–10 million." • The Carnegie Europe report says Southern Europe in particular remains exposed and vulnerable to pressure from MENA migration flows." There are two ripple effects -- EU’s Schengen system of passport-free travel, one of the greatest achievements of European integration, is being ignored by countries doing border checks to try to halt the migrant flow; and, the growing polarization among European states, "with fundamental and increasingly intractable divisions on the question of resettlement -- especially between Germany and Central and Eastern Europe." Temporary border controls allowed in Europe in September 2015 did not provide much relief from the accelerating migration flows. • The current EU immigration debate has two issues -- the European Commission and some countries like Germany that have taken the bulk of migrants and the related costs and social unrest repeatedly demand EU solidarity on resettlement quotas; but, EU states less affected, primarily in Central Europe, are slowing down the flow by closing off access routes, while others such as Italy have sent money to countries Central Europe to keep the migrants in place. Despite occasional success in providing assistance to transit states, the EU will likely be overwhelmed by the next migration wave, with surging numbers of migrants arriving from deep inside Africa. • It would be a mistake to under-estimate the political impact of the immigration issue in the EU. What some are calling "immigration fatigue" has set in as national populist parties make gains in local and national elections. The immigration issue drives political realignment in the EU today -- in election after election, populist challengers threaten established political parties, and although anti-immigration parties have yet to become the majority in any EU country, they have shrunk the size of Europe's political center. • And, MENA migration has pitted governments against one another. Austria’s foreign minister recently demanded that Italy stop allowing illegal migrants to reach the Italian mainland because that gives them a gateway to Europe. In July, the Italian foreign ministry responded by calling in the Austrian ambassador to complain after Austria threatened to deploy 750 military personnel to the Brenner Pass on the Austrian-Italian border. Meanwhile, the governments of Hungary and Poland are determined not to allow any migrants to be resettled on their territories. Opposition to the European Commission’s quota schemes for migrant resettlement remains strong across Central Europe. But, resentment by citizens against the Central Euopean EU member states is palpable in EU leaders whose countries have borne the brunt of resettling the migrants -- Germany, Sweden, Austria, Denmark, and non-EU Norway. Some governments have said they are prepared to use their armed forces to prevent illegal migration into their countries. • • • SOME EU MEMBER STATES MAY WANT TO EXIT. Europeans’ initial goodwill and occasional enthusiasm for the new arrivals have given way to growing public anger and fear, causing a fall in public confidence in European governments’ ability to deal not only with the migrant crisis but with overall governance in the EU. • BAVARIA. A shock YouGov poll in July revealed a huge 1/3 of Bavarians support for a Bavarian break-away from Germany, with support also at 20% or above in five other states. In Bavaria, 32% of respondents answered yes to the question: “Do you agree with the following statement : my state should be independent of Germany.” Bild newspaper, who commissioned the poll, said they found the results “frightening” : "So far the idea of becoming independent from Germany was mostly known from Bavaria. A frightening number of citizens want their state to turn their back to Germany." Bavaria is home to Munich, Germany’s third-largest city, and has 2,843,500 people -- more than 15% of Germany’s total population. Bavaria is also home to Germany's best-known industry, automobiles -- BMW, Mercedes. Porsche, and Audi are headquartered in Bavaria. Support for Germany is still high in several other states -- but even in Saarland, Thuringia, Saxony, Meck Pom and Saxony-Anhalt at least 20% of respondents favored leaving Germany. Just two of Germany’s 16 states saw less than 10% of their population support separatism -- Schleswig-Holstein and Rhineland-Palatinate, whose largest city is Frankfurt. Some of Bavaria's anti-German support may reflect Bavaria's Catholic tradition, as opposed to the rest of Germany where protestantism is more common. Historically, Bavarians are probably closer to Austrians that has been majority-Catholic, like Bavaria. The anger in Bavaria, like the rest of the EU, is over the initial decision of Chancellor Merkel to allow millions of migrants into Europe to be processed and settled whether or not they were refugees. That policy is changing but it has done great political damage to Merkel, who is running for a fourth term as Chancellor in September. Those results will tell the tale about how the EU moves forward on the immigration issue. Before the German elections, nothing concrete will be decided. • POLAND is also in active oposition to the EU, locked in a political struggle that has made a Polexit scenario closer to reality than ever before. And, the Polish president of the EU Council and former Polish prime minister, Donald Tusk, dropped a bombshell on Saturday, saying the EU did not need Poland to survive and vice versa -- just a week after European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker threatened to pull the plug on Poland’s voting powers. Tusk’s comments are the latest step in an escalating conflict between the EU and Poland’s ruling Law and Justice party (PiS), which began when the EU demanded that the PiS drop controversial plans to exert more control over its judiciary. Now, according to Rafał Riedel, a professor at the University of Opole and a guest lecturer at Sankt Gallen University, PiS is starting to lay its Eurosceptic cards on the table : “The current government are doing a lot in their power to find themselves on a collision course with Brussels, starting with environmentalism all the way up to the procedures that defend democracy. It is an effect of harking back to nationalistic and sovereign ’nostalgics’ present in parts of Poland’s society, which PiS elevated to power in 2015 and are holding up today at a high level of social support -- 35 to 40%. Jarosław Kaczyński and his party is evolving from the soft-Eurosceptic party it was between 2001 and 2007, into a hard-Eurosceptic one, particularly since 2015.” The professor voices the EU leadership line that all dissenters are right-wing populists who do not understand the value of the EU and its elites. And, Donald Tusk's comments, according to Professor Riedel, showed that : “Despite clear declarations from PiS that Poland’s place is in Europe, and that Poland supports the process of European integration, the government’s actions are completely different. They draw Poland away from the nuclear centre of integration and conflict Poland with Europe’s most important partners and its biggest neighbour and investor -- Germany. It is enough to say that it was no coincidence that the UK chose Poland as a strategic partner in Europe. It is not a coincidence that PiS is in the same EU parliamentary group with the Tories." That is the overriding EU leadership sentiment -- stay close to Germany and do not criticize it or the EU. Tusk's answer to Juncker was : "There is a question mark over Poland's European future today. I do understand emotions of Poles who are concerned about courts, or Poland's future in the EU." • HUNGARY. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán’s speech in Romania in late July laid the EU issue out : "At the beginning of the nineties, most people -- not only in Hungary, but also across the whole of Central Europe -- thought that full assimilation into the Western world was just opening up to us again. The obvious approach was adjustment to that world: to in a way shed our skin and grow a new, fashionable Western skin. From this it followed that in our politics we would simply need to copy what they were doing in the West. Back then -- 27 years, 28 years ago -- we came together here, and we thought that we freedom fighters living on this side of the Iron Curtain could also have something valuable to say to a Europe which had by then been living in peace, freedom and prosperity for forty years. Back then we weren’t surrounded by television cameras, and our words commanded no attention whatsoever. Now, however, they do. And if I were to name the most important event, the most important Hungarian and European event of the past year...I would say that it is the strengthening of the Visegrád Four. Although there was a presidential election in the United States, and not so long ago the French presidential and parliamentary elections swept away the entire French party system -- which are both important things -- I’m convinced that the most important development of the past year has been the Visegrád Four cooperation becoming closer than ever before. We can say that Warsaw, Prague, Bratislava and Budapest are speaking with one voice. This is a great achievement, as these are countries which are very different in their characters. Here we have the enthusiastic Poles, the ever-cautious Czechs, the sober Slovaks and the romantic Hungarians; and yet we are able to speak the same language. We can be truly proud of this....Certainly not everyone remembers that in 2009, after his election, President Obama made his first important speech abroad in the city of Cairo. This year the newly-elected US President delivered his first important speech abroad in the city of Warsaw. To illustrate the extent of the changes, it’s enough to quote a few sentences from the speech made by the American president in Warsaw. I’ll quote from it now : “We have to remember […] that the defence of the West ultimately rests not only on means, but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have. […] Our own fight for the West does not begin on the battlefield. It begins with our minds, our wills and our souls. […] Our freedom, our civilization and our survival depend on these bonds of history, culture, and memory.” He then went on to say: “So together let us all fight like the Poles: for family, for freedom, for country and for God.” That was late July, and now there are rumors in Europe that Poland and Hungary could form a coup against the EU bloc. Hungarian-Polish political scientist Dominik Hejj said : “The relations are very strong, and almost every week a Polish minister visits Hungary and vice versa. Hungary has shown Poland that they can act domestically as they wish. The EU can't do much about it.” • • • FRANCE AND GERMANY MAY BE PLOTTING TO FORM AN ELITE EU GROUP. Handelsblatt reported in late July that France and Germany are thinking about doing the one thing that will drive Central Europe and Eurosceptics all over the EU farther from the EU's embrace. France and Germany are considering the idea of creating a powerhouse group within the EU that will work quickly towards mutual economic goals. According to Handelsblatt, the two leaders have been discussing the possibility of increasing cooperation within the Eurozone with some, but not all, members of the currency union. The two opted not to reveal concrete proposals for these reforms. However, France is interested in strengthening the monetary union "at all costs.” French president Macron is said to see a core group of countries within the Eurozone : “If our ambition to act together is not shared in the whole community, we have to find ways to move faster in a smaller group. We do not want to formally exclude anyone.” However, Macron is believed to think it would be helpful to cooperate more closely on certain financial or political issues with countries willing to do so. Apparently this step had already been discussed during Macron-Merkel meetings. • In addition, the EU has already formed a group of willing parties that are advancing together on defense policy. Insiders within the French government, according to Handelsblatt, say that they want to see this approach in the monetary union, too. No one will be excluded and the door remains open, sources said, but with a smaller group it will be easier to accelerate integration. Since his election earlier this year, Macron has met and coordinated with the Italian, Spanish and Dutch leaders, as well as Chancellor Merkel. Currently, the European Central Bank’s expansive QE monetary policy is masking several problems, not addressing them. There are still “competition disparities” between the northern and southern European countries -- Italy is in a “difficult situation” and the Greek crisis continues to “smolder” despite its newly borrowed billions, according ot Handelsblatt. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and his French counterpart, Bruno Le Maire, have tasked experts to propose concrete steps to strengthen the Eurozone, while balancing the “contributions” of southern European countries with “complementary aid” from the northern countries. • • • THE EU IS NOT A UNION. The efforts of France and Germany will surely be seen as an effort to re-consolidate power within the original EU member states to the disadvantage of late-comers like Poland and Hungary. • As Hungarian prime minister Orbán put it in his July speech : "Over the next few decades the main question in Europe will be this: will Europe remain the continent of the Europeans? Will Hungary remain the country of the Hungarians? Will Germany remain the country of the Germans? Will France remain the country of the French? Or will Italy remain the country of the Italians? Who will live in Europe? This is a historical question which we must face up to today. As regards the specific situation -- and this is quite telling about the world that we live in today -- there’s no concrete, reliable information on the percentages of traditional indigenous Christians and the incoming Moslem communities living in Europe’s individual countries. In practice, it is forbidden to gather information like this. And the data which is gathered is not adequate for us to predict what the future holds for us, as migrants, immigrants, are not evenly distributed throughout the different age groups. So the general figures say little about what awaits us. We should focus most on people under the age of 15, and also those between 15 and 45. From those figures we can project, we can calculate, what the situation will be like in each country in, say, 2050." • Hungary does its own EU polling and Orbán gave some results : "This year’s survey showed that, across the 28 European Union countries, 81% of EU nationals thought immigration to be a serious or very serious issue. At a pan-European level, 64% believe that immigration leads to increased crime, and 59% believe that immigration changes the culture we live in. As regards the performance of Brussels, 76% of European nationals say that Brussels’ performance on immigration is poor. When asked whether more power should be given to Brussels to resolve this situation, or if nation states’ powers should be strengthened instead, we find that 36% of European citizens expect a solution from Brussels and would give it more power, while 51% expect nation states to provide solutions. In Hungary, 25% of our fellow citizens -- and this is not an insignificant number, as we’re talking about every fourth Hungarian -- believe that more power should be given to Brussels. But luckily 61% of our fellow citizens think that Brussels should have less power, and we should even take back those powers that we previously transferred to it – or at least some of them." • • • YET, HUNGARY IS NOT ANTI-EU. Despite Juncker's charges, Hungary's Orbán is clear about the future of Europe : "In order for Europe to be able to survive and remain the Europeans’ continent, the European Union must regain its sovereignty from the Soros Empire....we should reform the European Union....the reform of Europe can only start with stopping the migrants, putting an end to immigration, and everyone using their national competence to protect their borders....the migrants who have already arrived in Europe illegally must be transported back to some place outside the territory of the European Union....Europe must have its own military capability with which it can protect itself....we must restore our competitiveness, reducing debt, and introducing flexible terms of employment....we must enlarge the European Union, and must first of all admit the key state, Serbia -- however absurd this idea may appear at this point in time....we need a historic agreement with Turkey, and we need another historic agreement with Russia. Once all that’s done, we can say that we have reformed the European Union, and that over the course of the next few decades it may be able to compete with the world’s other continents....Twenty-seven years ago here in Central Europe we believed that Europe was our future; today we feel that we are the future of Europe.” • • • DEAR READERS, these solidly practical remarks come form a man that the EU elites call a renegade; as they call President Trump. But, several things on the Trump agenda will help to achieve these goals, the most important of which is that Brett McGurk, senior State Department envoy to the US-backed Middle East coalition, told reporters last Friday that actions taken by President Donald Trump -- including pushing decision-making down to field commanders -- has resulted in about 8,000 square miles being reclaimed in Iraq and Syria. McGurk, who held the same position in the Obama White House, cited "key changes" under President Trump that have brought about the ISIS changes. McGurk also said that renewed efforts by the Trump administration to "increase burden sharing from the coalition" among what he said were 73 countries has also been a factor. Most of the nations do not contribute to combat efforts, but they are expected to help to stabilize areas that have been cleared, McGurk said, adding : "People say, 'We want you to run the hospital, the school.' We say 'No, we’re not very good at that.' It’s not our responsibility." So, the EU coalition members must take up the challenge to help re-establish social order and infrastructure in Iraq and Syria, which will help to keep potential migrants to Europe at home where they want to be. • And, there is Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who was sworn-in for a further term last Saturday. Rouhani has accused the US of trying to undermine Teheran's nuclear deal with world powers, and urged European countries not to side with Washington. The deal he championed with the US and five other major powers in 2015 led to the lifting of most sanctions against Iran in return for curbs on its nuclear program. But, President Trump's return to a more aggressive Iran policy -- including new sanctions on Iran that target Iran's missiles program and human rights issues -- will serve as another catalyst for re-invigorating the West's restraint of Iran's exportation of terrorist groups and materiels, thus becoming a driver to keep Middle East populations at home in what will become more acceptable enivronments. • But, these efforts must be accompanied by a real EU effort to follow the advice of the overwhelming majority of its citizens -- stop open-door migration into Europe and root out migrants already there seeking economic advantages but who are not refugees. Many of these economic migrants are African and Europe is historically extremely well-placed to make the agreements with African states to develop their economies and create the jobs that will keep their populations of young jobless men at home. • And, if you think there are countries clamoring and pounding at the doors of the EU to get into the "club" by becomong EU member states, think again. According to the latest Eurobarometer polling results, just 43% to 46% of Norwegians and Swiss view the EU positively despite the fact they are the two countries with the closest ties to the EU. However, an astonishing 94% of Brazilians view the bloc positively, compared with 84% in China, 83% in India. These figures surely reflect the same needs that drive Middle East and African migrants into the EU. Here, the US should be doing its part in the western hemisphere to develop democratic systems, economic development programs and jobs needed to help Latin America become self-sufficient at home, rather than collecting along the Mexican border with the US. • There are solutions to the mass migration sweeping toward the West, but the solutions require clear-headed and practical responses, not EU finger-pointing and attacks on the one world leader who can really make a difference -- Donald Trump.