International Socialism 148 Autumn 2015 In Or Out? the Left and the European Union

Summary

Fran Cetti’s article was written at the time of the European response to the Mediterranean tragedies during the summer and early autumn of 2015. These continue but have been overshadowed by many thousands of refugees, many from Syria, arriving in Europe via the western Balkans. Apart from Hungary, whose right-wing government has been struggling to keep to the (brutal) letter of the common European immigration and asylum rules, these appear to have for the moment been challenged by the determination and desperation of these forced migrants and by the extraordinary upswell in support among ordinary people across Europe. This pushed Angela Merkel initially to respond by overturning the Dublin Regulation. The German government said it expected to receive 800,000 (Syrian) asylum seekers this year. But then, ahead of the EU summit on 14 September to discuss binding quotas for refugees across Europe, Germany effectively suspended the Schengen agreement by closing its borders to more refugees. This underlines that, despite the extraordinary events of the late summer, the racist migration management agenda hasn’t gone away. The idea of “regional resettlement” of refugees close to where they have fled, and the epithet “economic migrant”, will no doubt be deployed more rigorously in an effort at future exclusion.