EU Reveals ‘Mandatory Solidarity Mechanism’ to Spread Migrants Across All States

migrants
OLIVIER HOSLET/POOL/AFP via Getty Images
Jack Montgomery

The European Union’s unelected executive-cum-legislature, the European Commission, has put forward a “Mandatory Solidarity Mechanism” to spread the burden of the migrant crisis across all member-states.

The BBC reported that the “so-called ‘Mandatory Solidarity Mechanism’ will oblige each member state to accept a number of refugees in return for a reported €10,000 (£9,200; $11,750) per adult and €12,000 for an unaccompanied child,” and that “EU states that fail to honour the pact could face court proceedings and large fines.”

Curiously, the publicly-funded British broadcaster has since stealth-edited its article to remove this paragraph and any reference to the contentious “Mandatory Solidarity Mechanism” policy name with no explanation.

Outlets including Euractiv and the dpa also named it as such and still do so, however.

Breitbart London has contacted the BBC, but had received no explanation for the changes as of the time of publication.

Previous attempts to impose mandatory migrant redistribution quotas on all EU member-states have foundered on the point-blank refusal of national conservative or populist governments, particularly in Poland and Hungary, to submit to them.

The position of countries like Poland and Hungary is that they did not support German leader Angela Merkel’s decision to, in effect, open the EU’s borders to illegal mass migration unilaterally in 2015, and that they should not be expected to bear the consequences of a policy they never supported now that Germany and its allies no longer wish to accept migrants with “no limit”, stranding many in border states — particularly Greece and Italy.

The new “mandatory solidarity” policy, at least on paper, seeks to build consensus by allowing governments which do not wish to take illegal migrants to instead pay for their return — but the Devil very much appears to be in the detail.

That is, according to POLITICO, governments which “sponsor returns would have eight months to implement them, and it would even be able to decide which nationality of migrants it wants to try to return.”

However, if the sponsoring government “fails to implement the returns, it would have to take in refugees instead — and it would not have a choice when it comes to their nationality” — a clause which some observers believe would be used as a backdoor to force countries which prefer returns to redistribution to take migrants regardless, with activist lawyers operating under EU asylum laws having a relatively easy time delaying or outright thwarting deportation efforts.

Breitbart London has received a statement from the Hungarian government suggesting that they are not interested in the new policy, and implicitly criticising the EU establishment in Brussels for its failure to emphasise strong border controls.

“Since 2015, the stance of the Hungarian government on migration has been clear and unchanged… We believe that the European Union and its member-states must cooperate in keeping the looming migration pressure outside our borders,” the statement said, emphasising the importance of making arrangements with countries outside the bloc to stop migrants travelling to the EU illegally in the first place.

“While Hungary does not support obligatory distribution, it does defend joint borders, and we expect to receive the same amount of support as other Schengen states protecting those external borders,” they added firmly.

“We would like to remind everyone that since the 2015 migration crisis, the Hungarian government has spent more than 1 billion euros on protecting the borders of Hungary and the European Union, without a single cent of contribution from Brussels.”

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