On 13 February 2022 the Polish interior minister, Mariusz Kamiński declared on Twitter that his country was preparing for a vast number of Ukrainian refugees who, because of a potential conflict, may seek a shelter in his country. Only a few days earlier, Poland’s interior deputy minister, Maciej Wąsik, had made a similar statement when talking to a Polish radio station, stating that, Poland was getting ready “for a wave of up to a million people” coming from Ukraine - after all; “in line with the Geneva Convention, these people will be under Polish protection, and we absolutely won’t say no to helping them”.
The Polish leadership is not alone in advocating this position. In fact, various other Central and South Eastern European countries including Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina have announced their support for Ukrainian refugees, after the Russian invasion. Romanian authorities have already finalised an action plan for the Ukrainian refugees and are currently calculating the number of refugee camps that could be set up in a short span of time, whilst the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s chief of staff declared that Hungary could take care of tens of thousands of potential refugees from Ukraine.
One is not used to solidarity to such an extent with refugees on the part of these governments. Only in September 2021, in the light of the recent Taliban takeover in Afghanistan, the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban expressed a reluctance to accept any newcomers, calling them “a threat to the future of countries in Central Europe,” capable of putting at risk the European cultural identity. Similar sounding claims came from the Czech Republic where Prime Minister Andrej Babiš declared - after having consulted with his Austrian and Slovak counterparts - that there was “really no place” for Afghan refugees in the European Union; instead, it would be preferable to “find a solution that allows them to stay in Afghanistan”.
However, not just words, but actions clearly demonstrate that refugees are usually anything but welcome in the eyes of Central and South Eastern European governments, where fences are built against migrants and the mistreatment of migrants has unfortunately become commonplace. Especially with regards to the latter, there seems to be mounting evidence that the brutal treatment of refugees by border guards in Greece has reached a new low point. As per reports by prominent media outlets such as The Guardian and DER SPIEGEL, the Greek Coast Guard are no longer limiting themselves to systematically bringing refugees back to the sea and abandoning them on inflatable rafts, as they have been doing since spring 2020, but have gone on to pulling intercepted migrants out to the sea and then throwing them overboard. Since May 2021, a total of 29 pushbacks have been registered during which refugees have been thrown into water, with 11 such cases taking place only last December onwards.
The EU’s external borders in Central and South Eastern Europe have transformed into an area of lawlessness over the years. Further, it has been observed that local authorities increasingly do not feel bound by the law when dealing with migrants. Solidarity and willingness to help is shown by these governments only with respect to Ukrainian refugees. Yet, according to article 2 under Title I, the Treaty on European Union (TEU) which applies to EU countries underscores that, the EU is founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities, and the beneficiary of this is every human being, including non-Ukrainian refugees.
Having graduated with a bachelor’s degree in History and Political Science at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, Melissa Montasser is currently doing a master’s degree in International Relations at the University of Bologna.