The Asylum Crisis in Belgium: The Struggle to Balance Control and Respect for Rights

2023-09-16 12:06:32

The asylum crisis continues in Belgium. The State no longer seems capable of carrying out its missions and respecting Belgian and international law. In an election year, the damage might be enormous.

A question of story

We can consider that an election is won or lost on a story. A political story, which shows where society comes from and where we will go tomorrow. In a campaign, several stories compete in order to convince as many voters as possible. To convince, you have to be the most credible. To be credible, taking reality into account can be useful, but is not essential. In recent years, it has been less and less so. No need to remind you of the Brexit campaign, for example.

In short, all this to say that the asylum crisis, which has been growing stronger in recent weeks, is weakening the government’s narrative with each passing day. A story that attempts to bring together the control of flows and respect for rights. A balance repeated once more in March following intense discussions within Vivaldi.

Today, it seems impossible to hold together this ambition of controlling flows and respecting rights. The last destructive elements of this story: the Council of State which rejects the proposal of the Secretary of State for Asylum, Nicole de Moor, to no longer offer reception places to single men. Nicole de Moor replies that she will continue as before. Since there is not room for everyone, priority will be given to families. No, definitely, control of flows and respect for rights seem to have become a fable, a story cut off from reality.

Impossible ?

Is this story really cut off from reality? Human rights associations emphasize that there is a way to assume control and respect at the same time. “Wir Schaffen das” [Nous l’avons fait], as Chancellor Merkel said in 2015, during the last big crisis. By better distributing the applicants in the municipalities, by opening emergency reception centers, by appealing to the population as with the Ukrainians, it would be possible to welcome all these asylum seekers with dignity.

But the relative solidarity that still existed in 2015 or last year with the Ukrainians seems to have dried up. In any case, the parties in power, and even those of the opposition in fact, no longer seem to believe in it. Everything happens as if the parties had integrated the idea that we might no longer politically defend both the control of flows and the law before the voter. Because to defend the law would be to lose control (the famous draft), because to defend control would be to lose the law (the Geneva conventions, the European Schengen rules, Belgian and European law). This impossibility arises in almost all European countries. For us, it is the Vivaldi policy that embodies it. Thousands of court decisions, a recent judgment of the Council of State, a decision of the European Court of Human Rights which evokes a “systematic failure” of the implementation of international refugee protection by Belgium.

Decline

This systematic failure significantly reinforces the far-right narrative. The far right which has always lived from a declinist narrative. One of the causes of this decline would be the dissolution of national culture by foreigners. The far right offers voters a story of taking back control, of returning to control, to the detriment of law and human rights. Most far-right parties in Europe therefore have legal measures to protect rights in their sights. European Convention on Human Rights, European Court of Justice, Geneva Convention.

Each day that passes when the Belgian government fails to bring together control and law is therefore a stone in the building of the far-right narrative. It’s even a double punishment. Because the authorities demonstrate not only that they do not control the flows, but that in addition, as the far right has always proposed, we can rely on the rule of law.

The danger is all the more real – many observers point out – that the current increase in flows would be linked to the actions of pro-Russian governments in West Africa in order to destabilize Europe before the elections. If crisis management does not change, the message to voters will be simple: “Wir nicht schaffen das”, we cannot do it, we cannot do it. There is no worse story.

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