In Brussels, asylum seekers are forced to take shelter in cardboard boxes on the streets. Across southern Germany, the mayors of a small town are opening gyms and auditoriums to attract more refugees than ever before. And in the Netherlands, where a 3-month-old baby died this year, the government is being sued for inhumane camp conditions.
With Russia waging war on its doorstep, Europe has taken in 4.4 million Ukrainians this year, in addition to more than 365,000 first-time asylum seekers, many of whom are fleeing in Syria and Afghanistan. .
That number is even more than in 2015, highlighting a landmark migration period in contemporary European history, when 1.2 million refugees fled wars in the Middle East. arrived, most of them in Germany. The country’s former chancellor, Angela Merkel, encouraged their welcome with her now famous quote: “We can do it.”
But how Europe will do it again this time is raising small questions about the distribution of refugees – and their unequal treatment – while raising concerns about the emergence of refugees. It is expected that there will still be many Ukrainians when the temperature drops and Russia ramps up attacks on civilian infrastructure.
“It will be a difficult winter in Europe, which is already facing an exodus,” said Hanne Beirens, head of the European Migration Policy Institute, a Brussels-based research organization. biggest coercion since World War II. “The conflict in Ukraine is protracted, and Ukrainians will stay longer.”
As it builds and survives, Europe’s humanitarian crisis The risk of political collapse grows as a range of challenges pile up.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is a threat to its own security. On top of that, as Russia halted the flow of gas and EU nations imposed sanctions on Moscow, an energy crisis sent inflation soaring, causing discontent over the cost of living as well as war. Economic discontent and wariness about migration have fueled a new rise in far-right and populist forces.
“We are bouncing from one crisis to another,” said Zeno Danner, manager of the Konstanz district, on the shores of Lake Constance in Germany. “Corona is not over yet. We have an energy crisis. Our population is consumed by economic troubles”.
In an area better known for summer holidays, he is now in a position to convert sports arenas into refugee housing hubs, sparking outrage from voters in the United States. he.
For Europe as a whole, it is an environment ripe for scapegoating, where the burden of the crisis is not shared equally, between countries as well as the refugees themselves.
The current crisis is caused by the war in Europe, oneNationalists say – not because asylum seekers from conflict-torn countries like Afghanistan and Syria are walking to Europe by smugglers. And they are the ones who feel the burden of it.
Because Europe has granted visas and automatic residency to UkrainiansUkrainians are on the front lines for housing and refugee services. In some places, conditions are abrupt, with asylum seekers crammed in overcrowded reception centres.
A Dutch court recently ordered the government to improve refugee centres, after hundreds were forced to sleep outside this summer with little or no access to water or care. health. The scene of the 3-month-old girl’s death is still under investigation.
On Wednesday, the European Court of Human Rights asked the Belgian government to house a Guinean who has been living on the streets since July, when he applied for asylum.
Brussels, the capital of Belgium and home to the headquarters of the European Union, has used all of its 31,000 accommodation, leaving 3,500 asylum seekers homeless.
They include Basharmal Mohammadi, who says he fled Afghanistan after the Taliban killed his father and brother. Just a mile from Belgium’s royal palace, he lives with seven other Afghan teenagers under concrete stairs, where they share cardboard boxes and a molded mattress.
“I never thought I would live on a street like that in Europe,” said Mohammadi. “Our country has been at war for 45 years, and I think I can get a better life here.”
The disparity has led activists such as David Schmidtke, a spokesman for the Saxony Refugee Council in Dresden, to condemn what they call a two-tier system that is detrimental and discriminatory to asylum seekers from outside Ukraine.
“This is a racist institution,” he said. “There are two classes of refugees.”
In Germany and the rest of the European Union, officials say the sudden scale of Ukrainian arrivals leaves the bloc with no choice but to provide automatic recognition and, therefore, access to directly with the services that other asylum seekers often wait for months and years. .
But refugee rights advocates and even some civil servants say there has been plenty of time since 2015 – when Europe rejected offers for automatic recognition – to improve the asylum system.
“This is not a sudden crisis,” said Lies Gilis, a spokesman for Fedasil, the Belgian federal government agency responsible for receiving asylum seekers. “We’ve been warning the government about this for months.”
Germany, which prides itself on taking in nearly a million Syrian refugees, is feeling overwhelmed by the arrival of a similar number of Ukrainians and some 80,000 other asylum seekers. Some towns warn that they are seeing numbers they have never seen, not even in 2015.
Officials are tightened. Hotels and dormitories have been rented out and filled up. Now, the fairgrounds are being refitted and the large container camps are being expanded.
Some German leaders fear that the more the refugee crisis, coupled with its economic woes, intensify in everyday life, the more anti-migrant tensions have long been exploited by the right. . Even Ukrainians, once welcome, are now stirring up some discontent.
This week, an old hotel being prepared for asylum seekers near Dresden was partially burned down. In October, a Ukrainian housing dormitory in Germany is also caught fire. No one was injured in the fire.
While Ukrainians make up the majority of new refugees, some politicians have blamed tensions in the system on asylum seekers from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere outside Europe.
In Austria, about 71,000 people from outside Ukraine have applied for asylum this year, close to the 2015 level. Although the number of Ukrainians is almost as large, if not more, others have already applied. sparked outrage in recent weeks.
When the Austrian authorities in Tyrol began setting up tents in the town of St. Georgen, far-right leaders joined locals in protest.
“We help when needed. But enough for now; Now it is too much,” the mayor, Ferdinand Aigner, told Austria’s Der Standard. “Even a lamb will go wild if you keep hitting it.”
Austria has now followed in the footsteps of the Czech Republic in closing its border with Slovakia, where many irregular asylum seekers have tried to cross.
This mood has prompted a number of German officials, including Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, to join calls for Europe to better control its borders.
The new crisis has also revived debates over who should take in refugees – but with old roles reversed.
Countries like Italy and Greece, where asylum seekers first arrive on EU shores, have long demanded a fairer share of newcomers from their EU partners. But Germany and others have resisted such a redistribution system, requiring instead that asylum seekers be organized in their first destination.
Now it’s Germany, second only to Poland in the number of Ukrainians it takes in, and other wealthy Nordic nations complain they’re taking in too many refugees.
“Why does the whole of France have fewer Ukrainians than just the German state of Baden Württemberg?” Gerald Knaus, president of the European Stability Initiative asked. “And why do France, Italy and Spain together have fewer Ukrainians than the Czech Republic?” he added. Mr Knaus was the architect of Ms. Merkel’s controversial 2016 deal with Turkey that, for a time, had previously halted the flow of refugees.
Thomas Fabian, deputy mayor of Leipzig, East Germany, said many places are currently struggling because they have resisted maintaining facilities for refugees.
It’s much more expensive to build temporary housing, he says, as many are doing. He said he believes leaders in Germany and beyond must accept that, amid war and climate change, migration is part of Europe.
“The problem is not that many people come here,” he said. “The point is we need a distribution system.”
Even as the situation worsens for many, there is no sign that migration will slow down.
Many new asylum seekers interviewed in Germany expect more arrivals – especially Syrians who once took refuge in Turkey and now say they are facing growing hostility. there, including death and assault threats.
Nor do Ukrainians believe that tensions or more extreme conditions will prevent their loved ones from joining them, especially if hostilities intensify and Russia continues to bombard infrastructure that could devastate civilians. often freeze to death.
“Dozens of our friends have been forced to sit at home without electricity for 20 hours,” said Sasha Kovtutskyi, who is from a German family in Munich. .
All of this means that for civil servants like Ms. Gilis, Fedasil of Belgium, it has become a race to the bottom. “Now you have to choose who is the most vulnerable among the vulnerable,” she said.
Matina Stevis-Gridneff contribution report from Brussels.
