Europe is finally confronting the migrant crisis

VIKTOR ORBAN, Hungary’s combative prime minister, has long revelled in the image of a maverick defending his country’s national interests from the overmighty European Union. Now, as Hungary finds itself on the frontline of Europe’s evolving migration crisis, Mr Orban has found a new way to stick it to the bureaucrats of Brussels: by enforcing their law to the letter.

This year Hungary has emerged as a major transit country for Syrians and other migrants arriving in Greece and hoping to reach Germany, Sweden and other countries. The tens of thousands currently inside Hungary must register with the authorities, says Mr Orban, as EU law directs. But the wish of most to move on to Germany and elsewhere as quickly as possible has led to chaos at railway stations in Budapest and a stand-off near a Hungarian reception centre to which many migrants were taken by train yesterday, apparently under the mistaken belief that they were on their way out of the country.

Speaking yesterday in Brussels, Mr Orban also defended his controversial decision to build a razor-wire fence along the border with Serbia (and said another would be erected on the Croatian frontier if necessary). Without a robust defence of its external border, Mr Orban said, Europe’s internal passport-free Schengen zone would buckle under the pressure of illicit migration. He also attacked the EU’s plan to relocate asylum-seekers away from Greece and Italy, where most of them first reach Europe, across most other EU countries. This, Mr Orban said, could only induce more migrants to come: before long “tens of millions” would be scrambling to get inside. Many, he added indecorously, would be Muslims, and it was Hungary’s prerogative to preserve its Christian roots.

Mr Orban’s comments came just hours after news emerged that the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, plans to double down on its relocation plan. Next week Jean-Claude Juncker, the commission’s president, will announce a proposal to relocate 160,000 asylum-seekers across Europe, with the numbers each country must accept determined by a formula incorporating such elements as population, GDP and the unemployment rate. Yet the commission’s previous attempt at imposing quotas, which would have covered only 40,000 asylum-seekers, fell flat earlier this year, thanks to opposition from Mr Orban and other eastern European leaders (as well as Spain). Why might a plan four times as ambitious succeed?

One new idea doing the rounds is to allow the squeamish to make financial contributions rather than to accept migrants. But more important is the role of Germany. Angela Merkel, the chancellor, backed Mr Juncker’s first plan but did not take her battle with the easterners public. Instead, she went along with a subsequent plan under which most EU countries made voluntary pledges to accept a total of 32,000 asylum-seekers (that scheme is supposed to take effect next month). But with Germany expecting a record 800,000 asylum-seekers this year, Mrs Merkel now publicly insists that a binding solution is needed. Crucially, she has recruited France to her cause; François Hollande, the French president, had previously seemed lukewarm on quotas. The two leaders are preparing their own set of proposals, which should complement Mr Juncker’s.

This is shifting the terms of the debate. Poland, a strong opponent of the first plan, appears to be softening. In the Baltic states, too, there are cracks in the resistance. Even Mr Orban finds himself in an awkward position, for the new proposal adds Hungary to the list of states from which asylum-seekers will be relocated, thus relieving its burden. When pressed for his views on the new proposal yesterday Mr Orban was uncharacteristically cagey, insisting that he would assess the plan only after he had received it (the commission will formally publish its legislative proposal next week). Today the four countries of the Visegrad group (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia) will meet to see if they can arrive at a common position; the outcome of that discussion will shape the European debates to come.

Political rows certainly lie ahead, starting with a meeting of EU interior ministers on September 14th. The commission’s proposal may yet flop. Yet a bigger question is how far even a more ambitious relocation plan can relieve Europe’s difficulties. Some 350,000 migrants have reached Italy and Greece so far this year, and they continue to pour in. There are signs that growing numbers of Syrian refugees in Turkey and Lebanon have decided to try their luck in Europe, as life becomes more difficult in their adopted homelands. And, as EU officials have been discovering, the operational difficulties involved in relocating even modest numbers of asylum-seekers from one country to another are legion. If the small plan flops, the big one will go nowhere.

In the meantime Mr Orban, in his disagreeable way, leaves the EU grappling with some tricky questions. If the external border is porous, how can Schengen survive the large numbers of internal movements of migrants? Even with the relief offered by relocation plans, can frontline states really be expected to manage the unprecedented numbers of migrant arrivals they are facing, as the rules say they must? Perhaps most awkwardly, how might the many voters who share Mr Orban’s restrictive views be convinced that a few dark-skinned refugees will not irreparably alter the nature of their societies?