By protecting its borders so fiercely the EU is destroying what it is desperately trying to save: a centralised and monocultural Europe
In 2010 the mayor of Torrington in Devon caused a scandal by posting this "joke" on the internet, "Illegal immigrants are like sperm – millions of them come in but only one works". After the tragedy off the Italian island of Lampedusa, the truth is closer to: thousands come to our shores, but they rarely survive.
If I, born in Yugoslavia, and my family hadn't received political asylum in Germany during the 1980s, I probably wouldn't be writing these lines, as our future would have been uncertain. I had the opportunity to learn the language and even go to school in my adopted country. In the 90s I moved to Croatia and now we are "proud" citizens of the EU. That's three different political systems in a pretty short lifetime.
During the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the war of the 90s, refugees from Croatia, Bosnia or Kosovo survived only because they were given asylum by some European countries. Today, just 20 years later, it is our countries that are sought out by refugees from Afghanistan, Libya or Pakistan, desperate to get to the EU.
In July 2012, in waters south of the Croatian island of Mljet, a boat without a captain was sighted, with 65 migrants on board. After setting sail from Greece, the boat's engine failed, and the ship drifted at sea for two days. The migrants on board were originally from Somalia, Egypt, Syria and Afghanistan, and they wanted to reach the Italian coast. Eventually they ended up in the port of Dubrovnik, and now seek asylum in Croatia.
This was a sign of things to come. Why? Because Croatia is the EU country with the longest land border with non-EU countries, somewhat longer than that of Finland/Russia (1,340km) and Greece/Turkey (1,248km). Much of this border is shared with Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Montenegro. In 2012, 1,193 people applied for asylum in Croatia, 50% more than the year before. The largest number of asylum seekers come from Somalia – another country that has for almost two decades been hit by a bloody civil war. So, could Croatia become the new Lampedusa?
It seems that Croatia will in fact become the antemurale Europae, reminding us of its role as antemurale Christianitatis, a title that was given to the country in 1519 by Pope Leo X in praise of its struggle against the Turks and the advance of the Ottoman empire. Realising that title anew before its entrance to the EU, Croatia has introduced, on the insistence of the EU, visas for Turkish citizens, causing Turkey to reciprocate by re-introducing visas for Croatian citizens. Once again, Croats are called in to help Europe resist the "barbarians" as their primary task in the EU.
Here, a reference to the book The Ruin of the Roman Empire: A New History, by the classical specialist James J O'Donnell, is useful. Unlike traditional and prevailing interpretations that the Roman empire collapsed because of the barbarian invasions, O'Donnell claims that it is in fact the barbarians who could have saved it. His main thesis is that the barbarians who conquered Italy, Iberia, Gaul and north Africa were actually Romanised and thoroughly Christianised, and instead of ruining the Roman institutions, they were the ones who kept them running. The great historian of antiquity Cassius Dio writes in his Roman History:
"The barbarians were adapting themselves to Roman ways, were becoming accustomed to hold markets, and were meeting in peaceful assemblages. They had not, however, forgotten their ancestral habits, their native manners, their old life of independence, or the power derived from arms. Hence, so long as they were unlearning these customs gradually and by the way, as one may say, under careful watching, they were not disturbed by the change in their manner of life, and were becoming different without knowing it."O'Donnell's thesis is that the Roman empire only fell when Emperor Justinian tried to "restore" the old Roman empire, without being aware it had long gone. He was already living in an empire in which the "barbarians" were not so barbaric anymore, but had been influenced by Roman civilisation for decades or even centuries, and were not a threat to the Roman "Leitkultur". Instead, it was Justinian who was the threat to Rome's survival.
Is not the EU today also destroying what it is desperately trying to save, a centralised and monocultural Europe that is actually a rather recent phenomenon because such a situation didn't even exist before 1945? And isn't Europe, via Frontex, which controls border management, trying to save what cannot be saved, the "Fortress Europe" that is already conquered, not by mighty immigrants but by its own impotence and by the power of global capital?
The European problem is not the intruding barbarians – the problem is, and the recent tragedy of Lampedusa is a clear example, that the EU itself has become barbaric.
European UnionEuropeImmigration and asylumMigrationCroatiaSrećko Horvattheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds |
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