Summer
was still swinging when fugitives flocked to the Turkish beaches to board rickety
boats to Greece, an outer frontier of a unified Europe, a guarded gate at the entrance of a borderless
expanse inside.
Mutti
Merckel, assumedly in a late burst of motherly cravings, thought it was necessary,
and wise, to tell the world that the gates to Germany and the arms of the Germans
would be opened wide, to welcome and embrace all these desperate, war-weary people.
Whether this was necessary is open for debate – as all the talk of
indiscriminate immigration always will be. Whether it was wise is a shut case:
it was plain stupid.
Madame
Merckel has done a great job in Germany as chancellor, she has done it with
angelical zeal, prudent stewardship and sharp thinking. Thousands bobbing
across the narrow Aegean, and subsequently snaking through the Balkan landscapes
drove her to lose her cool and wisdom: in one emotional statement she abandoned
the principles of the Schengen concept and accelerated a steaming stream of
fugitives, fortune seekers and, no doubt, criminals of sorts: a stampeding crusade
that forged a pedestrian highway to Bavaria. The rest is history – with much misery
still waiting in the shadows.
While
one might excuse, or forgive, Merckel for showing her “mother’s heart”, her
decision to throw the Schengen framework out of the window is, inexcusable.
That she, and our mindlessly liberal international media, consequently attacked
Hungary and others for protecting or closing their borders, added insult to
injury and sent the entire European Project into a debilitating fit.
Why?
Simply because a basic principle of the Schengen accords is that entry of
visitors into Schengen Europe is checked and registered at the outer borders.
Until she caused the flood in Greece, this procedure had been followed for
years in Italy and Spain, notwithstanding these countries’ financial and
economic difficulties. Exactly because, and only because these outer borders have
barriers and gates and red lights and guards, we were in a position to
dismantle the controls at the internal borders. Declaring from her pedestal, as
Chancellor of Germany – assumedly the most powerful head of state in Europe,
that hundreds of thousands can simply walk unimpeded to the Bavarian non-border
guards, must be considered, certainly within a political and legalistic
context, as a blasphemous and utterly irresponsible statement.
The
broader consequences of this tragic error – European unity, social fabrics,
economical effects, war and peace – will become clear, and largely troublesome,
with time, after the human stream in the Balkans has dried up. An immediate and
at first glance surprising effect of the crumbling of the outer frontiers of
Europe has become evident over the past months. Indeed, many Belgian cities have
now placed advanced cameras on all approach roads into the city, all geared towards
early identification and recognition of malignant intruders: intelligent
detection that can trace and track movement.
All
of sudden we need to protect our cities and villages, simply because we don’t check
borders: on a sunny afternoon in 2015 Merckel put us all back into the Middle
Ages, or so it seems. It is an eerie feeling for law-abiding citizens in a
free and democratic society to see all coming and going watched, and spied on, all
the time as one drives on country roads. It adds an Orwellian twist to this
need for “protection” for, no doubt, the information thus gathered can easily and quickly be (ab)used
by the powers-that-be to control and suppress the citizenry.
If
the Schengen community lets go of its outer border checkpoints, and migrants
march wherever they want, every village will want to, and will have to, deploy their
own “border patrols”. That is not very efficient, nor will it prove to be effective.
To avoid this nonsense the existing law must be applied and checks at the outer borders must be re-instated! Rather than
being uncritically celebrated for heartfelt compassion, Angela Merckel should be
prodded to climb onto her pulpit to apologize for her misguided messianism and
reconfirm her commitment to European accords.
Grimburger,
November 8, 2015
