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How
Merkel and Middle Eastern Migration Ensured Britain's EU Exit
by Michel Gurfinkiel
PJ Media
June 29, 2016
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Originally published under the title "The Road to Brexit:
How Merkel Thwarted Cameron's Smart Gamble."
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Polls
show mass migration was the number one concern of voters in the Brexit
referendum.
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There were many signposts on the road to Brexit. As early as 2001, the
Swiss rejected access to the EU by an overwhelming 72.5%. Four years
later, in 2005, both the French and the Dutch rejected a European
constitutional treaty project in separate referendums. Polls indicated
that similar referendums would have turned the same way in other places.
In recent years, anti-EU defiance increased. Radical anti-EU parties
and more moderate Eurosceptic parties won higher and higher returns in
most countries, either in national or European ballots. In some countries
-- Hungary, Poland, Greece -- they simply won the election and took over
the cabinet. In others -- Austria -- they almost won.
Brexit is thus not so much a revolution in European affairs as the
culmination of a long and steady process.
United Europe had been popular among Europeans, and every European
nation was willing to join it -- as long as it delivered prosperity,
democracy, stability. Global security.
This was true of the six founding nations in the 1950s and 1960s, of
Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and the former Mediterranean dictatorships
in the 1970s, and of the former Communist countries of Eastern Europe in
the 1990s.
Things changed by the mid-1990s, however, when what had been known
hitherto as the European Community was changed into the much tighter
European Union. It soon became apparent, whatever the political class
would say, that the more centralized the Union became, the less it could
actually deliver.
Instead of the ever-increasing prosperity they had taken for granted
for a half-century, many Europeans had to face zero growth, bankruptcy,
and long-term austerity programs. Instead of more democracy -- free
expression, the rule of elected and responsible governments -- they were
getting more political correctness and more bureaucracy.
Instead of more global security, a new pervading sense of
powerlessness in front of Russian imperialism and jihadist terror.
Instead of more stability, more social disruption -- especially in such
essential areas as family and national identity.
The EU leadership was aware that things had gone sour and that
disaffection was accumulating, but it was not mentally equipped to draw
the proper consequences and find solutions.
David Cameron, the conservative Eurosceptic PM of Britain, was an
exception in this regard: he had a plan, and a rather brilliant one at
that. He was convinced he could have it both ways by organizing a British
referendum on Europe -- thus allowing the anti-EU tide to rise very high
– but to win it, even by a thin edge. He would then have appeared as the savior
of Europe, and be in a position to ask for a global reshaping and
loosening of the European treaties.
Maybe such a calculation was sound enough in 2013, when Cameron
promised to hold a referendum on the British EU membership. There was,
however, a dramatic acceleration in the European and British anti-EU
public opinion over the past three years. So much so that while Cameron
may have been banking on 52% to 48% returns against Brexit, he got just
the opposite.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel
brought some 800,000 migrants almost overnight into her own
80-million-person country.
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Several developments contributed to the pro-Brexit shift. The EU
political leadership's failure to address the global Middle Eastern and
North African issues -- from the rise of ISIS to the return of Russia,
and from the involvement of European Muslims in jihadist massacres in
Europe to the migrant crisis -- and German Chancellor Angela Merkel's
role in those issues were probably decisive.
Above all, Merkel's sudden and unilateral embrace one year ago of the
Middle Eastern and North African migrants and refugees changed
everything. She called for the immediate admission of hundreds of
thousands, even millions, to the EU on a proportional per country basis.
Indeed, she brought some 800,000 migrants almost overnight into her own
80-million-person country. This move brought a wide range of intractable
difficulties, including with sexual ethics and women's rights issues.
Most other European countries acquiesced to Merkel's call -- but in
fact downsized their own admission quotas to much smaller numbers.
Hungary, Slovenia, and Poland flatly rejected Merkel's guidelines.
Many Brits concluded that
Eurofederalism led to reckless decisions concerning mass immigration.
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Merkel's then made a no-less-sudden and unilateral rapprochement with
Turkey once it was clear that more migrants were planning to settle in
the EU. She traded a promise by Ankara to tighten its borders with
European countries against a promise to resume decades-old talks for
Turkey's access to the Union. In the meantime, she proposed letting all
Turkish citizens into the EU as visitors -- even without a visa. There
are exactly as many Turks today as Germans: 80 million.
The British -- who in spite of an outwardly tolerant view of
multiculturalism, have more restrictive immigration laws than most other
EU nations, and who never endorsed the Schengen accords about free
movement in the EU -- were deeply puzzled. Many of those who had wavered
until then between Euroscepticism and Eurofederalism concluded that
Eurofederalism was leading to reckless, ill-conceived, and unstoppable
decisions in such essential fields as mass immigration.
The mess had to be checked, or at least Britain should be kept out of
it. Brexit might have looked in the past a bit quixotic, and the European
option might have been seen as safer. Thanks to Merkel, the proposition
was now reversed.
Michel Gurfinkiel, a
Shillman-Ginsburg Fellow at the Middle East Forum, is the founder and
president of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, a conservative think
tank in France.
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